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Ardutectinc and Decomtiwn
Edita 2 by Anthony Blunt
Thon rapin by WE am Sana
Hi spin of the Counter-Reformatinn and the Carholie
Revival that follower! it found expression in a new style
of architecture thar was dynamic, emer tional and dramatic
It tsoomly en recent years that this style has bepun no be
yqefteciated and understocd by the layman as well as the
scholar. by Kemeing torethet none comprchensive volume
the whede subject of Raroue on ity historical gonrexe and
Nustearing i with the halliant phytegrapihs of Wir Swazn,
Anthony Blunt has poduced a wete-ranping and auth-
netative study, fresh ter the specashise ond a sure guide ft
the general reader tats complex and powerful fearurcs
Anthony Blunt stares by tracing the onpin of Panoque
atchitecture in Rome during the firse half of the i7rh
century throurh the penis of Bernini, Bornomine and
Petro da Cortona. These anists invented designs in
uchitectute and decom — hid movement in space,
dramane iflussinism in paint, stucos and marhle — b
express the revival of the ioman church. From home the
Rarique spread to Nerthern Italy where in produced the
fantusies of Guarint and the theatrical splendour f luvearea,
and to the Seath wo Naples and Sicdy, where « developed
special fotrns condinened by the lowe of the scutherner for
nich eobour
A mayor sectnnt as deweted t) the architecture, and ets
decoration, of Central Europe, the centre of the secwnd
gtest fhowering of the Rargue. In Vienna and lower Auster
a fever of building, both secular and ceclesyastical, towk
place ant the period saw the erection of preat Viennese
palaces by Fischer won Erlach and Hildebrandt, and the
splendid masterpieces otf Melk and Altenburg. ln Pohemia
and Frnennia a different style employing complex
structures was estahlished by che Mierzenh fer family and
Ralthaser Neumann, and in Southern Germany Cuvilliés
1nd Oenmkus Zimmerman produced work in the trac
Roeocd spre
French Rareque archircerare owes much to Rome. The
grnds<ale planning of Francs Mansant’s cAdtecwx, the
whole oonception of Versailles, and the last public
huildings of Loos XTV's reign, the Invalides, che chapel of
Versailles ond the Place Venere, ace firmly Ransgue in
expression. In the Protestant oountries of Northern Europe
the style met with amore limited welowme, In ceelesiastical
architecture there are individaal Barque fearures, such as
Wren's west towers of St Paul's, hur it was in secular
architecture, m Casthe Heward, Chatewerth and Blenheim
in perticular, that Barsgue ideas were mere suiter! tn
expressing the power of swereiensof wealthy incrviriuals
The wilume concludes with «discussion of the
architecture mf the peried in Spain and Spanish America,
which has something m commen with the cue Rarwjue m4
Reme. and in Prottugal and Brazd whose mest significant
huildings. particularly in theie decoration, were a teal
develepment fron Italian Baroque
Each pare of the text ts illustrated by magnificent
Phomprphs taken specially hy Wins Steaan. wheae work is
well known from his mary hevks, oc hy enpravings, plans
and phew graphs selected to complement his wrk
Sit Anthony Blunt was Surveyor of the Queen's pactures
from 1952 t+ 1972 and wotil 1974 was Director of the
fe nttinucd on acd ap)
£50.
£ SEN 14426-9 6)
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baroque
AX0coco
baroque
Rococo
Architecture and Decovation
Anthony Blunt, Alastair Lang,
Christopher Tadgell, Kerry Downes
EDITED BY
Anthony Blunt
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
Wim Swaan
First published 1978 by Paul Elek Ltd.
Reissued by Granada Publishing 1982.
This edition published 1988 by Wordsworth Editions Ltd,
8b East Street, Ware, Hertfordshire, under licence
from the proprietor.
Copyright © Grafton Books 1978
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may
be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publishers.
ISBN 1-85326-906-9
Printed and bound in Hong Kong by South China Printing Co.
Ne — —————
Contents Anthony Blunt Preface 7
Anthony Blunt Introduction
Part I Anthony Blunt Italy 20
Rome Introduction 20
Rome 1575-1625 22
Bernini 30
Borromini 37
Pietro da Cortona 48
Rome The last phase 53
Northern Italy Piedmont 64
Genoa, Lombardy and Emilia 74
Venice 78
The South Naples 84
Sicily 92
Lecce and Apulia 103
Part I] Christopher Tadgell France 106
Introduction 106
Louis XIII and Richelieu 106
Mazarin and the minority of Louis XIV 110
Colbert and the maturity of Louis XIV 123
The decline of Louis XIV. the Regency and Louis XV___130
Part III Flanders, England and Holland 143
Anthony Blunt Flanders 143
Kerry Downes England 148
Kerry Downes Holland 163
Part IV Alastair Laing Central and Eastern Europe 165
Introduction 165
Austria 177
Bavaria and Swabia 218
Bohemia and Franconia 252
Palace architecture in the Empire 271
Anthony Blunt Russia 297
Part V Anthony Blunt The Iberian Peninsula and the New World 299
Spain and Spanish America 299
Portugal and Brazil 316
Anthony Blunt Epilogue 329
Notes and Bibliography 331
Glossary 340
List of plates 343
Acknowledgements 346
Index 346
Preface
This book is not intended to be a complete history of the
architecture and decoration of the Baroque and the Rococo—
such a project would take many volumes of this size: it is rather
an attempt to define what can properly be covered by the terms
Baroque and Rococo and to bring out the salient features of
both styles and the modifications which they underwent in the
various countries which adopted them. Emphasis 1s latd on the
great figures of the period, but the vernacular style is also
discussed. even in areas which did not produce any great
masters.
In a sense J] am attempting to work out in greater detail the
ideas which I outlined in a lecture given at the British Academy
in 1972 with the somewhat cumbersome title: Some Uses and
Misuses of the Terms Baroque and Rococo as applied to Archi-
tecture. In this brief sketch [ tried to limit the application of the
terms Baroque and Rococo to groups of works which had
fundamental] qualities in common and to eliminate from their
coverage certain types to which the terms have commonly been
applied, but which. in my opinion. are essentially different from
the true Baroque and Rococo as they appeared initially in
Rome and France respectively.
This book is the result of close collaboration between the
various contributors. The general scheme and the division into
sections were the result of joint planning and there has been a
continuous interchange of ideas between the various authors.
Naturally our approaches vary, partly because of the particular
interests of each individual author and partly because of the
problems presented in the different sections. In some cases the
historica) background needed specially detailed investigation.
in others considerations of architectural theory were of pre-
dominant importance: in some areas decoration was the most
important element to be analysed. in others planning and
structure were the features of real originality. We hope, how-
ever. that in spite of these variations the different sections of the
book share a common basic approach and form a coherent
picture of the architecture and decoration of the period.
Our intention was to write for the reader who has an interest
in the history of architecture but not necessarily a specialized
knowledge of it. and therefore the temptation to take short cuts
by using technical terms has been resisted as far as possible. In
order not to interrupt the flow of the arguments footnotes have
been kept to a minimum. They are mainly designed to give the
authorities on which the statements made in the text are based
and to guide the reader to books and articles where he can find
fuller information on particular subjects that interest him.
The illustrations are based on the photographs taken by Wim
oe,
Swaan, but these were made before the present team of authors
was connected with the project and have been supplemented
by others from various sources, including engravings and
drawings.
This book is dedicated to the memory of Rudolf Witt-
kower. to whom I personally owe all the training I ever had in
the study of architecture and from whom one of the other
contributors. Kerry Downes, also learnt much directly. The
two younger contributors did not know him personally but join
with us in paving tribute to the founder of the modern approach
towards Baroque architecture and sculpture.
Anthony Blunt
London 1978
| Ecstasy of St Theresa, marble group by Bernini, c. 1644-47, in the
Cornaro Chapel. S. Maria della Vittoria, Rome
Introduction
The word “Baroque’ has been and still is used in many different
senses, but in this book it will be taken to mean the style which
was created in Rome roughly in the period 1620-70, that is to
say in the pontificates of Gregory XV, Urban VIII, Innocent X
and Alexander VII. It can reasonably be thus defined in terms
of papal history because it expressed the spirit which dominated
a particular phase in the development of the Roman Church,
represented by the popes just mentioned, and although it
spread to other areas and was used for different purposes it
always retained the fundamental characteristics developed in
Rome.
During the second half of the sixteenth century the Roman
Church, the very existence of which had been threatened by the
Reformation, went through an austere period of interna]
reform designed to set its own house in order and to give it
sufficient strength to reassert its power. This phase was typified
by the activities of the Council of Trent which met from 1545 till
1563. The Council laid down new laws for the internal discip-
line of the church and re-examined the doctrines which had
been challenged by the Protestants. The internal reform was
stringent and removed many of the abuses which the Protes-
tants had attacked—by condemning simony (the buying of
offices) and pluralism (the holding of many offices), by
improving the educational system of the clergy, by reaffirming
the observance of monastic rules and the need for bishops to
reside in their dioceses. and emphasizing the importance of
preaching—but in the matter of doctrine, far from adapting
themselves to the demands of the Reformers, the Roman
theologians affirmed more vehemently than ever many of the
points which their opponents had attacked: the sole nght of the
Church to interpret the Bible and the equal validity of tradition
and the scriptures as sources of religious truth, the validity of all
seven Sacraments (of which the Protestants only accepted two,
Baptism and the Eucharist), the doctrine of Transsubstantia-
tion (the Real Presence of the body and blood of Christ in the
bread and wine of the Mass), the veneration of the Virgin Mary
and the saints and the worship of their relics.
This movement of administrative and doctrinal reform was
accompanied by a wave of religious enthusiasm. It was the time
of the great reformers such as S. Carlo Borromeo, the great
fighters against the heretics and the infidel, St Ignatius and St
Francis Xavier. and the great mystics, St Theresa of Avila and
2 S. Ivo della Sapienza, Rome, inlerior (afler restoration) by Borromini,
1642-50, decorated after 1655
St John of the Cross. Some of these, like St John of the Cross,
expressed themselves in good works and magnificent poetry.
but most of them took more practical action by creating new
orders, or reforming existing ones. The Jesuits, founded by St
Ignatius, the Theatines, by S. Gaetano Thiene, the Oratorians,
by St Philip Neri, and the Carmelites reformed by St Theresa
became the militants of the new way of life, and the means by
which the spirit embodied in the Council of Trent was carried
into effect.
The decrees of the Council of Trent were expounded in
greater detail by some of the reformers of the period. S. Carlo
Borromeo and his nephew Cardinal Federico Borromeo, for
instance, laid down rules for the guidance of artists and patrons
commissioning churches or works of religious art. Paintings
and statues must be designed to convey the truth of Christian
doctrine, not to satisfy the senses: they must follow the details of
the scriptures or the legends of the saints. and they must observe
the laws of decorum as far as the painting of nudes was
concerned. Churches must be planned to satisfy the needs of
liturgy, not merely to be beautiful in form and ornament. In fact
the arts had to be the handmaids of religion, and paintings had
to be the Bible of the illiterate, as they had been in the great days
of the Church in the Middle Ages.
The effects of this approach to the arts can be seen tn the
painting and architecture of the later sixteenth century in Italy
and elsewhere. The great cycles of frescoes in Roman churches
of the time deal with carefully thought-out programmes. ex-
pounding the mysteries of the Faith. like those of the Cappella
Sistina in S. Maria Maggiore, extolling the virtues of the
martyrs. as in the horrific frescoes in S. Stefano Rotondo, and
sometimes even celebrating recent victories over the enemy, as
in the decorations of the Sala Regia in the Vatican, executed in
the 1570s, which include not only the ‘Victory over the Turks at
Lepanto’ in 1571 but the ‘Massacre of the Protestants in Paris’
on the Feast of St Bartholomew in the following year. In the
designing of churches fundamental changes were introduced:
the Greek cross and circle, much favoured in the early sixteenth
century because of their geometrical perfection which was
considered a symbol of the perfection of God, were rejected in
favour of the Latin cross which was liturgically more satisfac-
tory in that the clearly defined choir allowed for the separation
of the clergy from the laity, a point to which theologians of the
Counter-Reformation attached importance as it emphasized
the sacred character of the priesthood. The long nave provided
a good setting for processions and allowed the construction of
chapels for the worship of individual saints. The decoration of
17, 68
10. Introduction
churches was to be decent but simple, and the first Jesuit
churches, such as the Gesu in Rome or the Gesu Nuovo in
Naples, were initially to have been in stucco and stone only,
without marbling, gilding or even frescoes, all of which were
lavishly added in the seventeenth century when policy and taste
had changed.
In comparison with this austere and heroic phase of reform,
the Baroque age was one of fulfilment and enjoyment. It did not
produce any figures comparable to the great reforming saints of
the sixteenth century, but it was a period in which it seemed that
the Church, building on the achievements of the Counter-
Reformation, might reassert its position as a temporal as well as
a spiritual power. This hope proved illusory, and the efforts of
the popes to intervene effectively in European politics were
steadily frustrated by the newly formed centralized states,
above all by France, which circumscribed the efforts of In-
nocent X to take part in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648,
resisted all his attempts to interfere in internal affairs and
deliberately humiliated his successor Alexander VII into mak-
ing public and abject apology over a minor diplomatic incident.
From this time onwards the papacy ceased to be a major power
in European politics.
In the 1620s and 1630s, however, the general optimism
seemed justified. The battle of the White Mountain in 1620, in
which the Catholic forces totally defeated an alliance of Pro-
testant princes, assured the Empire as a stronghold of Catho-
licism: misstonary work was carrying the faith to the Far East
and to the states of Latin America; and, though the finances of
the papacy were never sound, the reforms of the late-sixteenth-
century popes had created a temporary feeling of security.
The energy which in the last decades of the sixteenth century
had gone into reform was now directed towards celebration.
The heroes of the Counter-Reformation were canonized —
Borromeo in 1610, Ignatius, Francis Xavier, Philip Neri,
Theresa in 1622, Gaetano ‘da TFhiene in 1629.°and these
canonizations were the signal for the building of churches and
chapels dedicated to the new saints.
As would be expected this new spirit demanded a new style to
express its aspirations. The severe didactic manner of painting
advocated in the years of reform gave place to a more joyous,
more emotional style in accordance with the new religious
mood in which the worship of the Virgin and Child and the
saints played a leading part. Apparitions of the Virgin and
Child, saints in ecstasy and miraculous events became the
stock-in-trade of painters and sculptors,” and to represent them
they invented new formulas: swirling compositions, warm
seductive colouring, figures in strong movement, dramatic
gestures, and a whole apparatus of clouds, putti and radiances.
The greatest master of this style in ltaly was Bernini, whose
Ecstasy of St Theresa may be taken as symbolizing the new art.
Painters such as Giovanni Lanfranco, Pietro da Cortona, or
Maratta gave brilliant expression to the same feeling, but the
greatest exponent of the style in painting lived and worked
outside Italy: Peter Paul Rubens, whose altarpieces for the
Jesuits and other religious orders in Antwerp were among the
masterpieces of the period.
If this new art is to be described by a single epithet, it could be
called rhetorical. Artists aimed at arousing astonishment, at
creating strongly emotional effects, at imposing them instan-
taneously, even abruptly, on their audience, and they directed
their appeal not only to the sophisticated Roman ecclesiastics
and secular aristocrats but also to the thousands of pilgrims
who visited the city.
These aims led them to produce a style which to a northerner,
often influenced, though perhaps unconsciously, by traditions
of Puritanism, may seem vulgar and even irreligious, but the
southern Catholics of the day thought it appropriate that the
worship of God and the saints should be accompanied by a
splendour at least equal to that demanded by secular princes.
3 Above left S. Maria della Vittoria, Cornaro Chapel, c. 1644-51, with the
Ecstasy of St Theresa by Bernini
4 Left S. Andrea al Quirinale, Rome, by Bernini, t658—70, interior of the
dome
67
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It would moreover be entirely wrong to suppose that, be-
cause this rhetorical art made a direct appeal to the emotions
and even to the senses, the artists who produced it were
unintellectual. Bernini was a man of wide culture who wrote
poetry, produced plays, and composed music: Cortona was a
master of architecture as well as of painting, and was a learned
theologian: and among the pure architects Francesco Borro-
mini was an enthusiastic archaeologist. Guarino Guarini a
professional mathematician, theologian and philosopher. and
most of the great architects of the period were well versed in
geometry and in the art of engineering.
The salient features of Baroque architecture as 1t was created
in Rome and as it later spread to other areas of Europe may be
summarized as follows. Baroque architects preferred curves to
straight lines and complex forms to those which were regular
and simple. The ideal form of the architects of the Renaissance
had been the circle. which is symmetrical about every diameter,
and the square and the Greek cross, which are symmetrical
about their two principal axes. Baroque architects preferred the
oval to the circle because it had greater variety in its changing
curvature. and the Latin cross to the Greek; but in each case
they liked to introduce variations. ‘combinations of different
ovals, or curves to break up the straight lines of the Latin cross.
Even in their simple forms the oval and the Latin cross had
one characteristic which appealed to Baroque architects: they
implied a feeling of movement on their longer axes. as opposed
to the static symmetry of the circle or the Greek cross, and this
feeling of movement could be intensified by the variations
introduced in their more complex plans. This effect was streng-
thened owing to the fact that Baroque architects often used
incomplete ovals. so that one space leads on into the next. In the
vertical the same kind of movement is obtained by continuing
the main lines of the lower walls right up to the top of the
structure, or by an ingenious repetition of forms, sometimes on
a diminishing scale on the intenor of a dome.
Baroque architects also sought movement in the actual walls
of their buildings. This interest is most clearly displayed in their
treatment of facades. Whereas a typical Renaissance facade
tends to be more or less in one plane, articulated by pilasters or
at most half-columns. Baroque architects liked to treat their
facades almost like sculpture. setting columns into the walls,
opening them up with niches of varying scales, and finally
actually curving the whole surface of the fagade, which 1s
sometimes treated almost as a single surface, but is often given
the sculptural treatment just described.
In the decoration of the interior again Baroque architects
employed a number of methods which were foreign to the spirit
of the Renaissance. They often combined in a single whole the
three arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture. so that the
painting of the altarpiece or on the vault, the sculptured figures
of saints or donors contribute as much as the architecture to the
whole effect. Further. artists working in one medium often use
means proper to others, thus creating an actual fusion of the
arts. Architectural members are sometimes replaced by sculp-
ture or are so contorted and decorated that they seem more like
S Above right St Peter's, Rome, interior showing Maderno’s nave, 1609-26,
and Bernini's baldacchino, begun 1624
6 Right S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, fagade by Borromini,
designed, c. 1637, execuled 1665 onwards, the upper par! finished after
Borromini’s death
Introduction
11
sculpture than supporting elements. Sculptors introduce
colour—almost like painters—1in the form of iJlusionist marble
inlay. by imitating the texture of velvet or silk, or by creating
effects of false perspective. Painters use this last device on a vast
scale and set up complete buildings on the ceilings of their
churches or the sa/oni in their palaces. Architects execute
similar effects of /éger-de-main in three dimensions, producing,
for instance, arcades which appear twice their actual length. All
these devices contribute, by their element of surprise. to the
shock-effects sought by Baroque architects.
The effects of surprise were heightened by carefully con-
trolled light, either directed to highhght some particular fea-
ture, or to shine on a fresco or a relief from a concealed source,
thus producing an unexplained and dramatic effect.
Other devices are equally ‘theatrical’. A favourite method
was to spread an action across the whole space of a church; for
7 Opposite S. Ignazio, Rome, frescoes on the vault of the nave by Andrea
Pozzo, 1691-94
8 Below The colonnade of S1 Peler’s, by Bernini, begun 1656
Introduction 13
instance, a martyrdom may be depicted over the altar and the
saint may be shown being received in Heaven in a fresco on the
vault.
Baroque architects often heightened the striking impression
created by their churches by the use of elaborate ornament and
rich materials. This is often quoted as the first and chief feature
of Baroque architecture, but it is important to remember that it
1s not to be found in by any means all Baroque works. Some of
the most accomplished architects used the simplest materials —
brick and stucco—-and obtained their effects solely by the
ingenuity of their architectural forms.
Symbolism of a complicated kind is often used in the de-
coration and even the planning of Baroque churches. The
attributes of the particular saint to whom the church 1s de-
dicated may be included in stucco or painted panels or even
worked into the architectural plan, and there are often allusions
to the idea that a church was the modern equivalent of the
Temple of Solomon. In plan the architect may use a triangle asa
symbol for the Trinity, or the six-pointed star of David for
wisdom, and in one case a design is known to have been based
on the bees in the arms of Urban VIII.
Finally most Baroque architects liked to work on a big scale.
Rath
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This is not generally true of the first generation of Roman
Baroque architects, and the palaces of the Seicento are rarely as
big as, say, the Palazzo Farnese, but Bernini, in the Piazza of St
Peter's and in his unexecuted design for the Louvre, gave an
idea of the feeling for the colossal which was to be characteristic
of the great monastic buildings and palaces erected north of the
Alps. This love for a large scale also manifested itself in an
interest in town-planning, and Roman Baroque architects
produced some of the most celebrated examples of this aft,
beginning with the Piazza of St Peter's, and including the
Piazza del Popolo and the Spanish Steps, and their example
was imitated in many other cities in Italy and in other countries.
To cope with the articulation of these vast buildings architects
adopted the use of a giant Order, embracing two, sometimes
three, storeys of a building, a device which had been redis-
covered in the sixteenth century but not used extensively till the
Baroque period.
This is an example of an important general fact about Roman
Baroque architecture. Although it 1s a fundamentally new and
original style, many of the elements which go to compose it had
been invented in the previous century. Michelangelo and
Palladio had used giant Orders; Peruzzi and Vignola had
experimented with oval ground plans: Raphael, Peruzzi and
Giulio Romano, and many of the later Mannerists had created
trompe loeil effects in their frescoes; Raphael and Pordonone
had hinted at the device of extending the action over the whole
space of a chapel; Bramante had constructed false-perspective
colonnades in three dimensions; but these artists had used such
devices separately and usually in a discreet manner. It was left
to the Baroque to combine them into wholes bolder and more
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dramatic than anything created in the sixteenth century. Those
who condemn the Baroque would call them melodramatic and
theatrical, but for the particular purpose envisaged by Baroque
architects they were perfectly suitable.
If later sixteenth-century architecture was one source for the
methods of Roman Baroque architects, another was the ar-
chitecture of classical antiquity.2 This may seem surprising in
view of the accusations made by supporters of the Classical
schools of architecture over more than two centuries that the
architects of the Baroque broke every rule laid down by
Vitruvius and every principle implicit in the buildings of Greece
and Rome. This problem will be discussed 1n greater detail in
connection with the individual Roman Baroque architects,
particularly Borromini, and here it will be enough to state that
all the great Baroque architects expressed the greatest admi-
ration for the architecture of Classical Antiquity and that it can
be shown that they studied and imitated these works with care
and enthusiasm. What distinguished them from their more
obviously ‘Classical’ contemporaries was that they admired
and studied a different kind of Ancient architecture and
interpreted it in a different manner.
9 Above Piranesi’s etching of the Piazza del Popolo, showing S. Maria di
Montesanto (left) and S. Maria dei Miracoli (right), and the obelisk set up
by Sixtus V. The middle street is the Corso, in which ts visible the fagade
of S. Giacomo degli Incurabili; to the left is the Via del Babuino leading to
the Piazza di Spagna (see plate 73); on the right is the Via di Ripetta,
leading to the port of that name on the Tiber (see plate 71)
10 Opposite Turin, S. Lorenzo by Guarino Guarini, 1668-80, interior of
the dome
}
|
104
16 Introduction
By 1680 what one may call the ‘Founding Fathers’ of the
Baroque— Bernini, Borromini, and Pietro da Cortona—were
all dead. They were followed by a generation of less talented
architects who, however, succeeded in evolving a kind of
moderate Baroque, in which the individual brilliance of the
earlier styles was qualified, partly by the influence of French
11 Nymphenburg, the Amalienburg, detail of the ceiling of the Mirror
Room, designed by Francois Cuvilliés, 1734-39
taste, and which was much more acceptable to foreigners. In
fact this generation, of which the most important representative
was Carlo Fontana, created a style which spread throughout
Europe and was employed—with variations naturally—by
Juvarra in Piedmont, Fischer von Erlach in Austria, Schliiter in
Prussia, Schlaun in Westphalia, Jules Hardouin Mansart in
France, and even Vanbrugh in England.
At the same time, however, a more inventive development
from Roman Baroque was taking place in Turin, where Guar-
ino Gyarini created a highly individual interpretation of Borro-
mini’s style, which was carried on in the same district by his
follower Bernardo Vittone.
In other parts of Italy the spread of a true form of Baroque
architecture was much less considerable than is generally
believed. In many areas a strong local tradition inhibited its
acceptance. In Venice and in the ferra firma which it controlled
the principles of Palladio, codified by Scamozzi, held sway
throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and
Baldassare Longhena’s Salute stands out as an almost isolated
Baroque building. In Florence the followers of Michelangelo,
Buontalenti and Cigoli, imposed their style and the Baroque
never took root. Milan produced in Ricchino an important
forerunner of the Baroque, who probably influenced Borro-
mini, but the later Milanese works in the full Baroque style are
pedestrian.
The architecture of southern Italy presents special problems.
Naples was hardly affected by the example of Roman Baroque
till the early eighteenth century, but architects like Cosimo
Fanzago evolved a style which, though it never exploits Roman
ideas of planning and spatial invention, shows a feeling for the
articulation of the wall in depth and for a particular kind of
polychrome decoration which can properly be called Baroque.
In the first half of the eighteenth century Naples produced in
Ferdinando Sanfelice an architect who understood the prin-
ciples of Borromini and developed new forms out of them. In
Sicily the problem 1s to some extent similar. Much of Sicilian
vernacular, though fine in decorative inventiveness, shows no
appreciation of the real aims of Roman Baroque architects and,
apart from a few interesting sports such as Angelo Italia, little
Sicilian architecture can be called Baroque tll the appearance
of Rosario Gagliardi and Vaccarini in the middle of the
eighteenth century.
It is usual to describe as Baroque the late-seventeenth and
early-eighteenth-century architecture of Lecce and _ the
Salento—the ‘heel’ of Italy—but the term does not apply in any
real sense. The architects of this area did not show the slightest
interest in Baroque planning or structure, and the effect of their
churches depends entirely on rich and elaborate surface de-
coration, mainly based on motifs invented in the sixteenth
century. A phrase like ‘stile Salentino’ would describe it much
more accurately than the generally accepted ‘Leccese Baroque’.
In Spain there are a certain number of buildings, notably the
three Royal Palaces tn Madrid, Aranjuez, and La Granja,
which were designed by foreigners in the characteristic Late
Baroque style, but the mainstream, which reached its fullest
expression in Andalusia, is of a quite different type, charac-
terized by extravagantly broken up architectural forms, mixed
with naturalistic statues of ecstatic saints. This style satisfied the
emotional needs of the Andalusians, which found—and still
find—expression in the great processions of Holy Week in
Seville. Some of these Andalusian buildings include decorative
motifs taken from northern Mannerist pattern-books, parti-
cularly that of the German Wendel Dietterlin, whose type of
broken-up pilaster became widely popular under the name of
estipite. In certain cases, of which the most famous 1s the
sacristy of the Cartuja at Granada, the Mannerist estipites take
over completely, so that the term ‘Baroque’ no longer seems an
appropriate epithet for them; and this is even truer of the
architecture of eighteenth-century Mexico. The term Chur-
rigueresque has been suggested for this group, but this has one
great disadvantage, namely that the work of the Churriguera
family is for the most part conspicuously conservative. We
cannot coin a word from the name of the architect who built the
sacristy of the Cartuja, because his identity is not known. As
will be suggested below in the section dealing with this group of
buildings, the term ‘Neo-Mannerist’ is more precisely de-
scriptive of this style, but is in many respects unsatisfactory.
In Portugal the case is different. There is a vernacular style of
altar design which has as much in common with Romanesque
forms as with Baroque, but in Lisbon, Oporto, and Braga
another style developed in which the architectural forms were
98799
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based on those of Roman Baroque, interpreted in a highly
individual manner. The Portuguese took both these styles with
them to their colonies, and in Brazil local architects, of whom
the most celebrated, called Aleijadinho (‘the Cripple’). was a
man of exceptional talent. produced highly original variations
on the Portuguese style.
The development and influence of Baroque architecture
north of the Alps varied, as might be expected, according to
local conditions. In Catholic Austria and South Germany it
attained a second brilliant flowering in the first half of the
eighteenth century and the great monastery and pilgrimage-
churches of this area must count among the finest and most
characteristic manifestations of the style. In the Protestant
countries of northern Europe the style naturally met with a
more limited welcome. In ecclesiastcal architecture one can
only quote individual Baroque features, such as Wren’s west
towers of St Paul's in London, but in secular architecture
Baroque ideas were more acceptable and were well suited to
expressing the power of sovereigns or wealthy individuals. In
many cases, however, the Baroque had been filtered through
the sieve of French bon gout and emerged in a cchaster form. The
French never accepted the Baroque whole-heartedly, but archi-
tects no doubt learned much from the example of Rome. The
grand-scale planning of Francois Mansart’s chateaux and later
the whole conception of Versailles are in line with Baroque
ideas, and the last public buildings of Louis XIV's reign, the
Invalides, the chapel of Versailles, and the Place Vendome are
even more Baroque in feeling. During the earlier part of Louis
XV’s reign the demand was for a different kind of building,
hétels with small, elegantly decorated rooms as opposed to
large public works, and the tradition of monumental architec-
ture was temporarily eclipsed. When it reappeared in the middle
of the eighteenth century in the generation of Ange-Jacques
Gabriel, the Baroque features characteristic of Jules Hardouin
Mansart are still visible, but they are expressed in a more
severely Classical idiom.
So far the word *Rococo’ has deliberately not been mentioned
in this discussion, but when we come to the eighteenth-century
buildings of France and South Germany it can no longer be
avoided.
Like Baroque the word Rococo has been used in many
different senses, but there is general agreement on one funda-
mental point: in its origin it was essentially a style of de-
coration, more precisely the style which was invented in France
for the decoration of private houses and reached 1ts maturity
roughly in the period 1725 to 1740. It marked a complete break
with the style of the high period of Louis XIV’s reign, and
even more with that of the Baroque. It 1s marked by lightness
and delicacy; its decorative forms are composed of small.
broken curves, executed either in wood or in stucco, floating on
the surface of the wall or ceiling, leaving much of 1t unbroken.
Rococo decorators preferred light colours — pinks, pale blues,
cool greens, with plenty of white either in the field or in the
decoration itself, which is often touched with gold—as opposed
to the sombre colours and heavy gilding of the Baroque.
Rococo designers eliminate as far as possible the architectural
members—columns, pilasters, entablatures— and fuse their
decoration into gauze-like patterns over walls and ceilings,
which often merge into each other. In its mature form this
decoration is often asymmetrical and incorporates the shell as a
favourite motif. The term atectonic has appropriately been
Introduction 17
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detail of the entrance front
invented to describe this style. as opposed to the Baroque, in
which the architectural members, though often distorted in
relation to Classical canons, are always fundamental.
The Rococo did not arise suddenly but originated in a type of
decoration employed in the rooms decorated for Louis X1V in
the last fifteen years of his reign by Jules Hardouin Mansart and
his assistants. It was developed by the members of the studio
into the style known as Regence. which marks a half-way stage
between the late Louis XIV rooms and the full Rococo of
Pineau or Meissonnier.
Some writers confine the word Rococo to the field of de-
coration, but it seems reasonable to extend it to cover certain
whole buildings in which the architecture is inseparable from
the Rococo decoration. particularly those of Cuvillies and
Dominikus Zimmermann in Germany. where the Rococo
enjoyed a great success and produced works of the highest
invention and sophistication. The Rococo was also reflected in
the arts of furniture and ceramics, and the porcelain of Nymph-
enburg and Meissen could be regarded as among the finest
I]
304
productions of the style. The application of the term can
reasonably be extended further to the figurative arts, to include
the painting of Watteau and Boucher. the drawings of Cochin
and Gabriel de Saint-Aubin. and even the sculpture of J. B.
Lemoyne and, in Germany. Ferdinand Tietz and Ignaz Gtn-
ther.
The problem of Rococo outside France and Germany has
never been properly studied. In certain parts of northern Italy.
particularly Piedmont and Veneto, there was a direct diffusion
of the French style, but the term can be properly applied to the
atectonic architecture and decoration of certain Neapolitan
artists, particularly the architect Domenico Antonio Vaccaro
and the decorative sculptor Giuseppe Sammartino.
So far I have only discussed the senses in which 1 personally
believe the words Baroque and Rococo can most usefully be
employed. but something must be said about the origins of the
terms and the varying meanings which have been attached to
them?*
The word Baroque originally meant fantastic or misshapen
and it was used in two quite different contexts. The Portuguese
used it to describe a natural, irregular pearl, and the Italians
applied it to rhetoric. using it to describe a far-fetched or
fanciful argument. It was first applied to architecture by French
critics of the mid-eighteenth century and. as was the case with
Gothic, it was originally used as a term of abuse but stuck as a
stylistic description. Francesco Milizia* and his Neo-Classical
followers in France and Italy used the term to describe the
architecture of Borromini and his contemporaries because they
regarded 11 as malformed and as breaking all the laws of
Classical architecture. The term continued to be used in this
sense til] the 1880s, when certain German art-historians began
to use it to describe a definite phase in the evolution of
architecture.
They were driven to defining this phase by the realization that
art after the middle of the sixteenth century did not, as their
predecessors believed, simply represent a decadence from
Renaissance ideals, but a style with its own principles, quite
different from those of the Renaissance itself. These pioneers in
the definition of the Baroque— Burckhardt, Liibke, Gurlitt,
and above all Wolfflin® — applied the term to art in all European
countries. roughly from the middle of the sixteenth century to
the middle of the eighteenth, but their successors realized that
this definition was too wide. Chronologically these later
critics — Dvorak and Walter Friedlaender” © divided the period
into two parts and called the first Mannerism, a word of which
the exact application is now subject to much discussion and
disagreement. It was originally used to describe painters rather
than architects and was applied to the phase after the gen-
eration of 1520 (Raphael and the young Michelangelo) but was
later extended to cover the architecture of Michelangelo himself
and his followers, such as Buontalenti and Tibaldi, as well as
that of Giulio Romano and others. At the same time critics
came to see that WOlfflin’s bold attempt to apply the term
Baroque to the art of the whole of Europe in the seventeenth
century would not work, and that it was not generally valid for
French and Dutch art, which was conditioned by quite different
intellectual and political atmospheres. As a result the term came
13 Opposite Vienna, Karlskirche designed by J. B. Fischer von Erlach,
interior of dome, frescoes by J. M. Rottmayr, 1725-30
Introduction 19
to be applied in a more restricted sense, though most writers at
the present time continue to apply it to the architecture of
Apulia and the Spanish colonies in my opinion wrongly.
Other writers in the 1920s and 1930s held different views of
the Baroque. Certain nationalist German writers, such as
Hamann for instance, held that it was something fundamen-
tally Germanic and related to Gothic art. One Spanish critic.
Eugenio d‘Ors.? reversed the ‘restrictive’ tendency of the time
and maintained that Baroque was a phase which occurred in all
epochs as a reaction from the art of Classical periods towards a
style which was lively. vigorous. and irregular. In all he defined
twenty-two different Baroque phases in the history of art, from
prehistoric times to the architecture of cinemas and hotels of his
own day. This application of the word, which makes it practi-
cally meaningless, has not been generally accepted. but the term
can reasonably be applied by extension to one phase of ancient
art, which produced Pergamene sculpture, the Temple of
Baalbek, the rock-tombs of Petra, and the cities of Sabratha
and Leptis Magna.
The word Rococo was also first used in a derogatory sense.!°
It was coined in the studios of the French Neo-Classical
painters of the 1790s to describe the art of the type of which they
most strongly disapproved, to which the terms marquise and
Pompadour were applied—unfairly, since the marquise was a
keen supporter of the Classical movement inaugurated by her
brother, the marquis de Marigny. The word Rococo is
probably—though not certainly—derived from rocaille, a term
used to describe the shell-incrusted rocky surface of artificial
grottos. but it has slight echoes of baby-talk in the repetition of
the second syllable ro-co-co. These overtones would fit with the
attitude of superiority which Neo-Classical artists adopted
towards the art of the previous generation. French art-
historians prefer the phrase “Louis XV’, but this has disadvan-
tages. It emphasizes the French origin of the style. but would be
awkward if applied to the German version of the art. Further
the various styles current in France during the eighteenth
century do not coincide with the political phases. The Régerice
style, which is named after the Regent for Louis XV during the
minority (1715-21), in fact originated well before the death of
Louis XIV, and the origins of the Rococo go back to before
1721. The discrepancy is even more marked in the later part of
the century, because the style called by common consent ‘Louis
XVI originated at least two decades before the death of Louis
XV. Unfortunately no better stylistic term has so far been
suggested for this important phase of French taste.
Some critics have attempted to spread the use of the term
Rococo beyond the visual arts. Indeed the plays of Marivaux
and the verse of some French poets of the early eighteenth
century seem to qualify for inclusion, but when Voltaire is
described as a typical Rokokomensch the term seems to burst. It
could cover some of his verse and the lighter contes, but
Voltaire, the reformer and fighter for the rights of man, cannot
be regarded as Rococo: not that everyone who appreciated the
art of the Rococo need have been Rococo in his life. One of its
greatest admirers was Frederick the Great. who certainly
showed no Rococo delicacy in his conduct of war or politics!
Pam
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Rome
It has already been said the Baroque was born in Rome, and It is
therefore logical to begin any history of the style by a fairly
detailed account of the architecture produced there in the
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.’
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Introduction
During the years 1575 to 1625 the position of the papacy
changed radically.2 Under Pius 1V (1559-65) the Council of
Trent held its last and most important session, the decisions of
which completed the internal reform of the Church; under his
successor, Pins V (1565-72), the victory of Lepanto gave at least
a temporary check to the Turks. In fact the two great threats —
Protestantism and Islam—had both been contained, and the
Church had a breathing-space before starting on its bolder
campaign of expansion. Sixtus V (1585-90) restored internal . ;
security by destroying the bandits who had made it unsafe to ERARRE OTN STORES SINR TS ae! a ee
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move about the Campagna and even in many of the un-built-up
areas of Rome itself. Sixtus was also responsible for laying out
the street which still forms one of the axes of the city, running
from the Lateran to S. Maria Maggiore and on to the Trinita
dei Monti: and which if it had been completed would have run
on to the Piazza del Popolo. This road was punctuated by the
obelisks which the Romans had brought from Egypt and which
Sixtus set up again with inscriptions converting them into
monuments to the triumph of the Church. In the same way he
restored the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, but
topped them with colossal statues of St Peter and St Paul.
Clement VIII (1592-1605) increased the temporal power of the
papacy by adding Ferrara to the Papal States in the north of
Italy, and gave proof of the new, more liberal atmosphere
around the papacy by absolving Henry IV of France on his
abjuring Protestantism, in spite of the fact that he was a
relapsed heretic —an act of political wisdom which would have
been unthinkable in the time of Pius V or even Gregory XII].
During the period in question the finances of the papacy had
improved, partly owing to the administrative skill of Sixtus V,
partly through the better exploitation of the rich areas belong-
ing to the papacy in the north of Italy, but above all through the
increase of the contributions from the Catholic countries of
Europe, stimulated by the flow of gold from the Spanish and
Portuguese colonies in Central and South America, where the
Church played an active part through its missionary activities.
The great missionary bodies were the old orders of Dom-
14 Above Palazzo Serlupi, Rome, by Giacomo della Porta, 1585, engraving
of the facade
15 Opposite Palazzo Aldobrandini-Chigi, Rome, building started about
1590, probably by Giacomo della Porta, continued by Maderno and
finished by Felice della Greca
inicans and Franciscans and the new order of the Jesuits. The
new orders—the Theatines and Oratorians as well as the
Jesuits—received official recognition and attained greater
power in the early decades of the seventeenth century. Paul V
supported the Jesuits in their old and bitter quarrel with the
Dominicans on the question of Grace, and his successor,
Gregory XV, who only reigned for two years (1621-23),
confirmed this attitude by canonizing their two heroes, St
Ignatius and St Francis Xavier.
Therefore when Cardinal Maffeo Barberini was elected pope
in 1623, with the name of Urban V1]J], the stage was set for a
great artistic revival to reflect the new strength of the Church,
and Urban was the right man to seize the opportunity. He was a
prolific if mediocre poet, was interested in music, and was an
enthusiast for the arts of architecture, sculpture, and painting.
In Bernini he found exactly the executant that he needed, and
his name is connected with almost all the projects sponsored by
the pope: the baldacchino and the decoration of the crossing
piers in St Peter’s, within the same church the pope’s own tomb
voll
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and the monument to Countess Matilda. and the completion of
the Palazzo Barberini. The reckless expenditure of Urban and
his nephews—particularly Cardinal Francesco Barberini. one
of the great patrons and collectors of the ttme—brought
a good deal of od:um on the regime and. when in 1644 Urban
died and was succeeded by Cardinal Giambattista Pamphili, as
Innocent X. the whole policy of the papacy 1n the arts. as well as
in other fields, was reversed. Bernini fell from favour and fora
short time was replaced by Borromini, who was responsible for
the major project of the pontificate — the remodelling of St John
Lateran —and was involved in Innocent's plans for making the
Piazza Navona a monument to his family by building the
church of S. Agnese and the adjoining Palazzo Pamphili.
Borromini. however. was temperamentally unable to take
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advantage of his opportunity and, even before the death of
Innocent, Bernini had regained papal favour to the extent that
he obtained the commission for the great Fountain of the Four
Rivers in the Piazza Navona, which had been promised to
Borromini. With the election of Alexander VII (Chigi) in 1655
Bernini established himself as an even more complete dictator
of the arts than he had been under Urban. All the major
projects of the pontificate—the Cathedra Petri and the pope’s
tomb in St Peter's. the Piazza in front of the church. and the
Scala Regia. the grand entrance to the Vatican—were designed
and executed by him. The only important commission which
Alexander gave to another architect was the construction of the
facade of S. Maria della Pace, the church containing his family
chapel. which went to Pietro da Cortona.
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The popes were responsible for the most important architec-
tural projects of the period, but the new orders played a
considerable part.? It is true that their principal churches had
been built in Rome before the ttme of Urban VII] —the Gesu
was begun by Vignola in 1568, the Oratorians’ S. Maria in
Vallicella in 1575 and the Theatines’ S. Andrea delle Valle in
159] — but much remained to be done. The Jesuits were build-
ing a second church, dedicated to S. Ignatius, and the Orat-
orians added to their church an Oratory, a brary, and living
quarters for the Fathers, all designed by Borromin1.
In the second half of the century Jesuit patronage underwent
a fundamental change, partly owing to the policy of the new
General, Padre Oliva, who was elected in 1664, with the result
that the originally simple and bare Gesu received a rich revet-
ment of fresco and stucco, S. Ignazio was given its dazzling
illusionist ceiling fresco by Andrea Pozzo, and the Noviciate
church of S. Andrea al Quirinale, built by Bernini between 1658
and 1670, though small, was planned and decorated with the
utmost refinement.
Individual members of the papal families and others con-
nected with the Vatican administration contributed to the
patronage. The practice of nepotism which had its last flower-
ing at this time meant that vast sums entered the coffers of the
more favoured members of the families of Paul V (Borghese).
Gregory XV (Ludovisi), Urban VIII (Barberini), Innocent X
(Pamphili), and later Clement X (Altieri). Part of these sums
was invested in land and many of the great estates—and with
them titlkes—passed from the old Roman families, particularly
the Colonna and the Orsini, to the new papal aristocracy; but
much was spent on building. Many of the new families rebuilt
their family chapels and often embellished the churches in
which they stood, and erected magnificent palaces in the heart
of Rome and splendid villas in the higher parts of the city or on
the Alban Hills, particularly at Frascati.
Rome 1575-1625
The sudden explosion of a brilliant new style of architecture in
the years 1625-40 must have seemed the more surprising to
contemporary Romans in that the architecture of the previous
half-century had been markedly pedestrian.* Curtously enough
no architect appeared during the period who showed either the
individual genius of Caravaggio or the academic perfection of
the Carracci and their followers. Michelangelo had died in
1564, and there was no one to carry on his tradition. Unlike his
great contemporary Palladio, who left a school and a doctrine
which flourished almost unchallenged 1n the Veneto for two
hundred years, Michelangelo’s architecture was too individual,
too revolutionary to have an immediate effect. One pupil alone,
the Sicilian Giacomo del Duca, showed some understanding of
it, but he built very little, and Roman patrons preferred the
tasteful Classicism of Vignola and, after his death in 1573, had
to be satisfied with the mediocrity of Giacomo della Porta,
Martino Longhi the Elder, and Domenico Fontana. The last-
named was offered incomparable opportunities by Sixtus V in
his projects for the rebuilding of Rome, but his talent was
limited to the creation of vast, cubical masses of masonry
without architectural distinction, as in the Lateran Palace and
the wing added by Sixtus to the Vatican. Giacomo della Porta
showed greater originality. In S. Andrea della Valle he adapted
Vignola’s design for the Gesu by slightly heightening the
proportions and emphasizing the feeling for the vertical by
using clustered pilasters, the lines of which are continued
through a broken entablature and so run right on into the ribs
ofthe vaulting. In the designing of palace fagades—for instance
the Palazzo Serlupi—he introduced some variety to the form
which had been universally accepted since Antonio da
Sangallo’s Palazzo Farnese by breaking the regular spacing of
the windows and so concentrating attention on the centre of the
building. He was also responsible for planning—for Cardinal
Pietro Aldobrandini, nephew of Clement VIIl—the vast Villa
Aldobrandini at Frascati, one of the earliest and most splendid
of those country retreats which members of the great Roman
families built on the northern slopes of the Alban Hills.° The
villa is heavy and somewhat awkward in design, but the
magnificent semi-circle of fountains and statues cut into the hill
behind it, which was executed by Carlo Maderno after della
Porta’s death and perhaps not entirely from his designs. gives
some hint of the splendour of the architecture of the next
generation.
Most church architects obediently, but timidly, followed the
example of Vignola. His plan for the Gesu, with its broad nave,
shallow transepts, and multiple side-chapels for the worship of
individual saints, was admirably suited to the needs of the
Catholic revival and remained canonical for two centuries. The
two most important churches based on the Gesu— della Porta’s
S. Andrea della Valle and Longhi’s S. Maria in Vallicella, also
called the Chiesa Nuova—have already been mentioned, but
della Porta also produced two particularly fine variants of the
model on a small scale in S. Maria dei Montiand S. Atanasio dei
Greci, the latter for Catholic priests following the Greek rite in
preparation for missionary work 1n the Eastern Mediterranean.
Vignola’s experiments with oval plans at S. Andrea sulla Via
Flaminia and S. Anna dei Palafrenieri were applied on a larger
scale and with a slightly greater emphasis on the long axis
leading to the high altar by Francesco da Volterra in S.
Giacomo degli Incurabili, but no real innovations were in-
troduced in the planning or construction of churches.
With the interior decoration of churches the case is different,
and the period saw the introduction of marbling to a hitherto
unknown degree. The most spectacular example is the Cappella
Sistina, added by Sixtus V to the church of S. Maria Maggiore
on the designs of Domenico Fontana. The most important
features of this chapel are the tombs of Sixtus himself and Pius
V (who made him a cardinal), which consist of large structures
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16 Above The Gesu, Rome, plan by Vignola, 1568
17 Opposite The Gesu, Rome, interior by Vignola. Frescoes by Baciccio,
1674-79, the marbling added in the nineteenth century
24 Part 1 Italy
: of coloured marble and columns framing white marble reliefs
7 with scenes illustrating the lives of the two popes. The walls of
the chapel are articulated by red marble pilasters with small
panels of patterned inlay, and the marbling extends over the
whole wall surface. which is enriched with niches containing
life-size statues. The decorative scheme 1s completed by a cycle
of ceiling frescoes by a group of minor artists. Paul V added on
the opposite side of the church a balancing chapel for his tomb
and that of Clement VIII. which 1s almost identical in design to
the Cappella Sistina but even richer in its marble decoration,
Smaller family chapels in the same style were built in many
Roman churches, one of the most satisfactory being that
designed by Giacomo della Porta for the family of Clement VIII
in S. Maria sopra Minerva.
The most important architect of the generation before the
Baroque, who in many ways prepared the way for it, was Carlo
18 Above S. Giacomo degli tncurabili, Rome, plan by Francesco da Maderno (1580—1630).° Like his uncle, Domenico Fontana, he
Volterra. Building started in [590 was born in a village on Lake Lugano, in an area which had for
centuries been connected with the great building tradition of
Como. During the pontificate of Gregory XIII, probably when
he was about twenty, Maderno moved to Rome and joined
Fontana’s studio. He won the favour of Cardinal Girolamo
{9 Below S. Maria Maggiore, Rome, Cappella Sistina by Domenico
Fontana, 1585-90
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Rusticucci, who commissioned him to rebuild the ancient
church of S. Susanna. He also came to the notice of Cardinal
Camillo Borghese, and when in 1605 the latter became pope, as
Paul V, he immediately gave Maderno the most important
commission of his career. the completion of St Peter's.
At this tme the church was complete as fur as the crossing,
including the dome, which had been finished by Sixtus V. but it
remained to build the eastern arm — liturgically the western,
because the church is orientated so that the high altar is at the
west end. Ever since Julius II] had begun the new St Peter's in
1506 opinions had differed as to whether the church should be
in the form of a Greek or a Latin cross with a long nave. Plans
for both schemes had been produced, but no decision had been
made: now, however. the matter had to be settled. Some
maintained that Michelangelo's Greek-cross plan must at all
costs be followed, but others argued that his plan did not satisfy
20 Left St Peter’s, Rome, plan showing the church begun by Bramante,
1506, modified by Michelangelo and completed by Maderno, with the
colonnade by Bernini, begun 1656
21 Below St Peter's, the dome by Michelangelo, the fagade by Maderno
and the colonnade by Bernini
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26 Part 1 Italy
22 S. Susanna, Rome, by Carlo Maderno, 1603. Facade
the needs of ecclesiastical ceremonial, because it had no ade-
quate sacristy, few chapels for the worship of individual saints,
and no nave, a feature essential to house a large congregation
and to give a Suitable setting for processions. In the end the
party which supported the importance of ecclesiastical de-
mands was victorious over those who argued on aesthetic
grounds and Maderno was instructed to add a nave to the
church.
After several attempts at a compromise plan which would
provide for liturgical needs but preserve the symmetry of the
four arms of the church internally, the pope decided to jettison
symmetry and to construct the broad nave which exists today.
Maderno added two large chapels on either side of the nave and
adjacent to the crossing, one for the reservation of the Sacra-
ment and the other for the choir.
The decision to build the nave finally destroyed the possi-
bility of realizing Michelangelo’s ideas for the interior; it also
created difficult problems for the exterior. Adding the nave
meant that from any position near the church Michelangelo’s
dome would be partly obscured, and a further complication
arose from the project to build twin towers which would have
blocked the view of the subsidiary domes built by Vignola. In
order to get round the second difficulty, Maderno widened the
fagade by adding two bays at the ends for the towers. In this
way, seen from a distance, the smaller domes would have been
visible between the towers. Unfortunately, owing to a structural
defect, it proved impossible to build the towers and the church
was left with the present long, low front, only relieved by the
little structures containing clocks which were added by Gius-
eppe Valadier nearly two centuries later.
In designing the fagade of St Peter's Maderno had to take
into account Michelangelo’s elevation of the three arms of the
church, and he made use of the engravings in which
Michelangelo's ideas for the fagade of the church were re-
corded. Michelangelo had intended a portico with two rows of
free-standing columns, ten in the back row, four in the front.
Maderno abandoned this project because it did not include a
loggia from which the pope could give his blessing to the crowds
with the dignity required by the new interest in grand cere-
monial. At best he could have appeared at a window almost
completely obscured by the columns of the portico. Maderno
therefore took Michelangelo’s portico and, so to speak, squa-
shed it against the wall closing the church. The outer columns of
Michelangelo's design are represented by half-columns, and the
four middle ones by whole columns, magnificent cylinders of
the rough travertine out of which so much of Rome is built.
The addition of the nave and the way in which the fagade was
adapted to the needs of ceremonial were examples of the new
attitude towards ecclesiastical architecture, but they also ilus-
trate the fact that, however much the name of Michelangelo
might be revered, his ideas were not regarded as suitable for
execution in the new age.
In its way Maderno’s facade of S. Susanna (1603) is almost as
significant in the history of architecture as his design for St
Peter's. It marks the culmination of an important development
in the designing of church fagades. The fagades of most
sixteenth-century churches in Rome had followed a simple
pattern with two storeys, linked by scrolls, the lower one being
broader than the upper to include the aisles. These fagades were
basically flat — and they were either plain or articulated with
very light pilasters. Vignola’s projected fagade for the Gesu
ingeniously enriched this austere and srmple scheme by making
the fagade break forward in two stages. This created an
emphasis on the central bay, which was increased by two other
devices: the main door was flanked by full columns, and the
lines of the central projecting section of the fagade were carried
up through the whole height of the building and even across the
field of the crowning pediment.
Vignola’s design was not carried out and the existing fagade
was erected after his death by Giacomo della Porta. Della Porta
followed Vignola’s idea of breaking up and enriching the
surface of the fagade, but he did so 1n a different way. Whereas
in Vignola’s scheme the fagade breaks forward twice, della
Porta’s breaks forward, backward, and then forward again;
that is to say, Vignola created a steady movement forward
towards the centres, but della Porta established a broken
movement, forward and then backward.
In the facade of S. Susanna Maderno took up Vignola’s
scheme and greatly elaborated and enriched it. He makes his
fagade break forward steadily towards the centre, but he
emphasizes the movement by an increase in the plasticity of
different sections. On the lower storey the outer wings, which do
to
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Rome 27
23 Left Vignola. the unexecuted design for the facade of the Gest, Rome,
from the engraving of 1573
24 Below Palazzo Barberini, Rome, the Loggia, begun in 1628 by
Maderno, completed by Bernini with the assistance of Borromini
25 Below left The Gesu, fagade by Giacomo della Porta, finished 1577
not strictly speaking belong to the church, are flat and only
articulated with pilaster-bands. The outer bays of the facade of
the actual church are given Corinthian pilasters and low reliefs:
the next bays are articulated with engaged columns and have
heavily pedimented niches with statues: finally the middle
section, which contains the door, covered by a segmental
pediment, has full columns which support a rather heavy
rectilinear pediment. The upper storey is entirely articulated
with pilasters. except for the small columns which flank the
central window. As in Vignola’s Gesu, the lines of the central
section are carried up through the crowning pediment, and the
whole composition ends with the unusual feature of a balus-
trade along the top of the pediment. The subtle disposition of
Orders and decoration produces an effect of variety and move-
ment unknown in Roman facades of the late sixteenth century.
Maderno also made significant innovations in the designing
of palaces. The Palazzo Barberini. planned in 1625 for the
family of Urban VIII, 1s exceptional in being composed of a
single block with projecting wings, instead of four blocks round
a central court. The explanation is that, unlike most Roman
palaces. it was set in a large garden and so could be designed like
a villa, opening outwards, instead of being turned defensively
28 Part! Italy
inwards. Maderno’s model was in fact Peruzzis Villa Farn-
esina, built for Agostino Chigi in 1508-11, which had only been
imitated in Rome tn the intervening 120 years by Giovanni
Vasanzio in the Villa Borghese. The triple seven-bay loggia on
the west fagade — bigger and more spacious than anything of its
kind in Rome — opened on to what was originally a garden (the
main approach was from the east) and behind it on the ground
floor was a covered atrium. consisting of three ‘aisles’ of seven,
five, and three bays respectively and ending in a closed apse, a
feature unknown in contemporary architecture, which was
much remarked upon at the time as an interesting revival of
ancient Roman ideas.
The Palazzo Barberini was too vast a scheme to be much
imitated, and the innovations in planning which Maderno
introduced in the Palazzo Mattei di Giove were much more
influential. The palace was begun in 1598 on a corner site, which
enabled Maderno to arrange two entrances, one from each
street. The main entrance lies on the axis of the court, which is
continued in a garden. The second entrance leads into the
portico which runs along the side of the court nearest to the
main entrance, and from it the visitor has a view straight on to
the main staircase, only, however, up its first flight, because it
turns round on a square plan, so that on the first floor it leaves
the visitor on the axis of the upper loggia, from which the rooms
of the piano nobile open. This is an early hint of the vistas which
Baroque architects were to use to such effect in the creation of
their staircases, most effectively in Germany and Austria in the
eighteenth century.
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1633
27 Above Palazzo Mattei di Giove, Rome, plan by Carlo Maderno,
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28 Opposite St Peter's, Cathedra Petri by Bernini, 1657-65
Maderno was much the most inventive architect active in the
first thirty years of the seventeenth century, and it was from his
shoulders that the great figures of the next generation stepped
off, but there were other architects of some importance working
in Rome during his lifetime. Paul V employed the Milanese
Flaminio Ponzio (c. 1560-1613) to extend the Palazzo Borghese
and the Quirinal, where he added a wing which included a
private chapel decorated by Guido Reni and the huge Sala dei
Corazzieri decorated with bold trompe l'oeil frescoes by
Agostino Tassi and the young Giovanni Lanfranco. Ponzio
also built the Cappella Paolina to balance the Cappella Sistina
at S. Maria Maggiore. For Cardinal Scipione Borghese he
remodelled the church of S. Sebastiano, to which he added a
fagade of unusual form, with aclosed upper storey over an open
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three-arched loggia. On his death the pope and the cardinal
turned to the mediocre Dutch architect, Jan van Santen, known
in Rome as Vasanzio (c. 1550-1621), who completed various
buildings left unfinished by Ponzio and also built the Casino in
the Villa Borghese.
To the same generation belonged Fausto Rughesi, whose
only known work is the facade of S. Maria in Vallicella, the
church of the Oratorians (1605), and the mysterious Carlo
Lombardo or Lambardi (1554-1620), who was responsible for
the facade of S. Francesca Romana (1615), the only Roman
building of the period to show the direct influence of Palladio.
Another architect known by only one work in Rome was
Rosato Rosati, a Barnabite brother from the Marches, who
built the Roman church of his Order, S. Carlo ai Catinart
(begun 1611), a spacious building on a near-Greek-cross plan.
He left Rome before the church was finished, and the severe but
impressive facade was added in 1627 by Gtovanni Battista Soria
(1581-1651), who represented the most conservative and
Classical tendencies of the time. These appear in the front of S.
Carlo and also in the facades which he added to two other
Roman churches, S. Maria della Vittoria (1625-27) and S.
Gregorio Magno, also called S. Gregorio al Celio (1629-33), the
latter a grander version of Ponzio’s S. Sebastiano.
None of these artists learnt from the novelties which Mad-
erno was introducing into Roman architecture at the time. In
the case of Soria his Classicism was probably a conscious reply
to the innovations of Maderno, but the other architects just
mentioned appear simply to have contined to work in the
various conventions current in the late sixteenth century.
This conservative tradition was continued right throngh the
seventeenth century by Giovanni Antonio de’ Rossi (1616-95)
whose austere churches (S. Maria in Publicolis, S. Maria in
Campo Marzio) and palaces (Palazzo Altieri) stand out as
altogether exceptional and old-fashioned among the splendidly
bold works of the full Baroque which dominated Rome during
his lifetime.’
Bernini
When Maderno died in 1630, it was clear that there was another
architect, of amuch younger generation, waiting to step into his
shoes, Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598—1680).° Even before Mad-
erno's death — perhaps because he was old and ill — several
important commissions which he might reasonably have ex-
pected to receive as papal architect had gone to Bernini, and
after his death the latter rapidly became the favourite of Urban
VIII. From this time till his death in 1680 — with one short gap
during the first years of Innocent X — his career was one of
uniform and ever-growing success.
There is nothing surprising in this fact, as Bernini possessed
all the qualities needed for success as an architect at this
particular moment. He was a virtuoso and something of a
prodigy. By the age of twenty-five he had produced a group of
sculptures of which the inventive power and the technical skill
had staggered his patron, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, and all
the cognoscenti of Rome. He had an extraordinary feeling for
the dramatic, even the theatrical, in architecture, as well as being
amore than competent painter, a poet anda musician. He hada
lively mind and was widely read, so that he could converse on
equal terms with the intellectuals of his day and was even able to
charm Louis XIV and his courtiers on his visit to Paris in 1665.
He was also a deeply religious man and a friend of the Jesuits;
he practised the exercises of St Ignatius and performed his
religious duties regularly, as we know from the diary of his visit
to Paris.
Compared with his spectacular debut in sculpture Bernini's
first work in architecture was modest. This was the remodelling
of the little church of S. Bibiana (1624), to which he added a
portico and a fagade. These show some new features in design,
such as the insertion of an aedicule in the central section which
projects above the side bays, but the architecture has a dryness
of treatment surprising in a virtuoso sculptor. At the Palazzo
Barberini he modified Maderno’s design in execution, but his
exact contribution is difficult to isolate.
His first real opportunity came when, in the same year that he
designed the fagade of S. Bibiana, he was commissioned by
Urban to decorate the crossing of St Peter’s.° The scheme was to
include a baldacchino over the supposed site of the tomb of St
Peter and niches in the piers of the crossing to contain the
principal relics of the church. After a series of preliminary
projects, in which Borromini certainly played a part, Bernini
arrived at the design for the great bronze baldacchino which
today dominates the interior of St Peter’s. Apart from compli-
cated problems of liturgy and siting — the tomb was not exactly
under the centre of the dome — Bernini’s main difficulty was to
invent a baldacchino which would stand up to the competition
of Bramante’s vast crossing piers. This he achieved by making
the baldacchino out of bronze — taken, incidentally, from the
portico of the Pantheon — which made it stand out against
the silvery grey of the piers themselves, and, secondly, by
adopting twisted or Salomonic columns. These had a symbol-
ical value, because they were copied — with variations — from the
twisted columns which had been incorporated into the high
altar of Old St Peter's and were supposed to have come from the
Temple of Jerusalem. The four colossal columns are decorated
with gilt vines with putti climbing in them and support a
canopy, also made of bronze but designed to look like a colossal
fringe of velvet tassels, decorated alternately with cherubim and
the bees of the Barberini arms. The sun, also a favourite device
of the family, appears on the entablature over the columns, on
which stand four colossal angels who appear actually to be
carrying the canopy on garlands of flowers. Behind them four
huge volutes rise towards the centre, where they support a cross
standing on an orb, the symbol of Christ ruling the world. In its
combination of scale and richness of materials, in its dramatic
use of colours and contrasts of light and dark, and in its fusion
of architecture and sculpture the baldacchino ts one of the first
— and most remarkable — expressions of the Baroque spirit.
Some of the same qualities appear in the decoration of the
piers, Which was carried out between 1633 and 1640. The four
relics — the lance of St Longinus, the cloth of St Veronica, the
head of St Andrew, and a fragment of the True Cross — were
themselves kept in chapels dug in the foundations of the piers.
At the level of the church were four niches containing the
statues of the saints connected with the relics — only St Longinus
is by Bernini — and above are galleries in which the relics are
displayed on certain days. In the niches which enclose these
galleries Bernini incorporated eight of the columns supposed to
come from the Temple of Jerusalem, but between these columns
he inserted panels of a kind hitherto unknown in architecture or
sculpture. Each panel shows an angel carrying the relic and
flying against a yellow marble sunset sky with purple marble
29 Opposite St Peter's, interior of colonnade by Bernini, begun in 1656
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30 Scala Regia, Vatican, by Bernini, 1663-65
clouds. These two colours are carried on through the whole
design of the galleries: yellow in the gold of the rays in the half-
dome and in the grille over the door, purple in the marble of the
balusters of the balcony. Here not only is architecture fused
with sculpture, but an element of colour derived from painting
is added for good measure.
With the project of placing a baldacchino over the tomb of St
Peter was connected the need for a high altar in the apse of the
church, and this was to be combined with an appropriate
setting for the much-venerated Cathedra Petri which was
believed to be the Chair of St Peter but is now Known to be the
coronation chair of the Emperor Charles the Bald dating from
877. The project was not realized till the years 1657—65, when
the newly elected Alexander VII commissioned Bernini to
prepare designs. Bernini offered several projects. growing ever
larger and bolder, till the grandiose monument which we see
today was produced. The chair was enclosed in a huge bronze
throne, on the back of which is a relief showing Christ saying to
St Peter the words: “Feed my sheep’. This massive structure 1s
carried by figures more than twice life-size representing the
Four Fathers of the Church. Above is an oval window of
golden-yellow glass, with the dove of the Holy Ghost floating in
the middle, surrounded by gilt stucco putti and rays which
shoot upwards towards the vault and downwards across the
pilasters which enclose the whole composition. Here the ele-
ment of light 1s added to all the others of which Bernini had
made such bold use in the decoration of the crossing.
In the period between the work on the crossing and the
creation of the Cathedra Petri Bernini had decorated the piers
ol the nave of St Peter’s with reliefs, so that, with the exception
of certain niches still awaiting their statues, the decoration of
the interior of the church was complete. Alexander therefore
turned his attention to the area in front of the church, which
was still without any shape or organization.
At least since the time of Nicholas V (1447-55) the popes had
made plans for bringing some order into the zone between St
Peter's and the Tiber, and two streets — the Borgo Vecchio and
the Borgo Nuovo — had in fact been laid out, but nothing had
been done about the area in front of the church, except that
Sixtus V had caused Domenico Fontana to erect there the
obelisk which had stood in the Circus of Nero, that ts to say,
just south of St Peter’s. This obelisk was to be the focal point of
the piazza which Bernint was commissioned by Alexander to
build in 1657.!°
The practical problems which the architect had to solve were
complicated and varied. There was first the question of site. The
ground sloped down in front of the church, and on the right
(east) the old buildings of the Vatican encroached on the area,
making it impossible to establish a corridor leading up to the
entrance to the Vatican at right angles to the facade of the
church. Secondly there were the requirements of ceremonial.
The piazza had to be designed so that the maximum number of
people could see the pope when he gave his blessing urbi et orbi,
but he did this from two different points: on some occasions he
stood at the Benediction Loggia in the middle of the facade of
the church, but on others he appeared at a window tn the block
of the Vatican built by Sixtus V. Thirdly there was an aesthetic
problem. The facade of St Peter's, without the towers that were
intended to be added to it, was long and low, and the piazza was
intended, if possible, to minimize this effect.
Bernini produced a design which solved all these problems
brilliantly. In front of the church he laid out a trapezoidal area
defined by two corridors, of which the one on the right, leading
to the entrance to the Vatican, just touches the older buildings
of the Vatican palace which could not be demolished. In front
of this, round the obelisk set up by Sixtus V, he spread out the
main colonnade in the form of an oval. The four rows of
columns of which the colonnade is composed are so arranged
that seen from two points between the obelisk and the fountains
they align themselves one behind the other and appear to forma
single row.
At the end of the colonnade farthest from the church Bernini
left an opening of the same width as that between the two
corridors. At a later date he planned to close this with a third
arm of the colonnade, so that the whole piazza would have been
an enclosed space cut off from the rest of the Borgo, but,
although he prepared several schemes for this project, none of
them was carried out. The approach to the piazza from the river
was ruined in the 1930s by the opening up of the Via della
Conciliazione, which completely destroyed this intended effect,
31 Opposite $1 Peter's, Rome, baldacchino by Bernini, begun 1624
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although it has the advantage of allowing the visitor to see the
dome rising above the church unobscured by the nave.
The colonnade is so planned that, when the pope gives his
blessing from the Benediction Loggia in the middle of the
facade of the church, he can be seen from everywhere except
two small areas to the right and left of the entrance to the two
corridors. and by keeping the actual structure low, Bernini also
enabled him to be well seen when he gives the blessing from the
window in the Vatican Palace. This lowness also serves a purely
aesthetic purpose. because the colonnade forms a long hori-
zontal mass which makes the facade of the church itself look
higher by comparison.
This effect is intensified by the disposition of the two corri-
dors flanking the space in front of the church, because where
these abut on the facade there is a striking contrast between
their low pilasters and the giant Order of the church ttself.
Further Bernini turned to advantage the fact that he could not
lay out these corridors as lines at right angles to the fagade and
produces a ‘spreading’ effect. similar to that so brilliantly
created by Michelangelo at the Capitol, which adds dignity to
the building at the end of the composition, the facade of the
church.
In addition to forming a prelude to St Peter's, the colonnade
had a specific function to perform. Every year. on the feast of
Corpus Domini. the Host was carried in procession round the
area in front of St Peter's. Till the seventeenth century a
temporary structure was built under which the procession
passed. with the Host itself carried under a canopy. The
colonnade was to form a permanent way for this procession — a
purpose which it still serves today. For this reason Bernini made
the middle of the three aisles which run between the rows of
columns wider than the two outer ones, in order to make a
space wide enough for the procession, while the crowd could
stand in the outer aisles and in the piazza itself. For the actual
form of the colonnade Bernini was probably inspired by
reconstructions of an ancient Roman naumachia, a circular
space enclosed by a colonnade which could be flooded and used
for sham sea fights. He also probably had in mind the fact that
one of the roads which in ancient times led from the river and
passed near the Circus of Nero was known to have been
covered. like the great street which survives to this day at
Palmyra.
Bernini's colonnade satisfied all the needs discussed above —
practical, liturgical. and aesthetic — but for him and his patron
Alexander it embodied an idea, a concerto, which was for them
at least equally important and which the architect himself
expressed when he said that its two arms symbolized those of
the Church ‘which embrace Catholics to reinforce their belief,
heretics to re-unite them with the Church, and unbelievers to
enlighten them with the true faith’. Such an idea was funda-
mental to Bernini's conception of the Baroque.
The architecture of the colonnade is surprisingly simple,
consisting of an Order of massive Doric columns ending in
simple temple fronts with heavy unbroken pediments. Bernini
introduced one irregular feature: he evidently felt that the
Doric entablature, with its alternation of triglyphs and me-
topes. would break up the continuity of movement which he
sought and he replaced it by an Jonic entablature with a plain
32 Opposite Stupinigi, near Turin, by Filippo Juvarra, salone with frescoes
by Domenico and Giuseppe Valeriam, 1731—33
Rome 35
33 Statue of Constantine by Bernini, Valican. 1662-68
unbroken frieze. The continuous curve 1s only broken by the two
projecting bays on the cross axis of the piazza, but, as these are
without pediments, they scarcely interrupt the movement of the
whole colonnade as it swings round towards the church.
The colonnade made a splendid approach not only to St
Peter's but also to the entrance to the Vatican. which now came
at the end of the right-hand corridor, but, as things stood, this
corridor led to a narrow and dark staircase which provided the
only access to the main papal apartments. In 1663. on the
orders of the pope. Bernini began the construction of a new and
grand approach called the Scala Regia. The site available was
narrow and irregular, squeezed in on one side by the wall of the
Sistine Chapel and on the other by the outer wall of the palace,
the two walls being. incidentally. not parallel. Bernini was
inspired to a brilliant solution of the problems thus presented.
He planned the first flight of the staircase so that it continued
the axis of the corridor and at the first landing made it double
back on itself, so that it brought the visitor out at the door in the
middle of the long wall of the Sala Regia. the principal reception
room of the papal apartments. The upper flight of the staircase
30
36 6©Part I Italy
followed the line of the existing approach, but Bernini showed
great ingenuity in exploiting the awkward site to give greater
grandeur to the lower flight. He took advantage of the fact that
the two walls which enclosed the flight were not parallel and —
adapting a device which Borromini had used earlier at the
Palazzo Spada (see below, p. 47) — created an effect of false
perspective, making the two rows of columns which flank the
staircase converge, reducing them in height and lowering the
vault as the flight went upwards. In this way he increased the
apparent length of the flight, which was limited by the existing
landing, but he did not exploit the possibilities of this scheme to
the full, as he also sought another effect. The columns stand
away from the flanking walls and, ifhe had wanted to create the
maximum lengthening effect, he would have made those at the
bottom nearer to the wall than those at the top, so that the angle
of convergence would have been greater. In fact he did the
opposite and the columns at the bottom of the flight stand
further away from the wall than those at the top. His reason for
doing this was that it enabled him to create an impressive effect
for the visitor approaching along the corridor from the
entrance, in the form of a triumphal arch surmounted by the
arms of the pope carried by two trumpeting angels. The effect of
the staircase is made more dramatic by the insertion of windows
at the half-landing and the top of the lower flight, so that the
dark tunnel of the vault is interrupted by two patches of light.
The Scala Regia was not only the entrance to the Vatican, it
was also the way by which the pope came down to St Peter’s on
ceremonial occasions. It had therefore to be conveniently
linked with the church, and this Bernini achieved quite simply
by placing the landing at the bottom of the main flight in direct
continuation of the vestibule of the church, thus establishing a
right-angled junction between the vestibule and the staircase.
The dramatic effect of this junction is heightened by the
equestrian statue of the Emperor Constantine which Bernini
placed against the wall of the bottom landing, so that it is the
first feature to strike anyone approaching from the church to
enter the Vatican. The emperor is shown at the moment of
seeing the miraculous vision of the Cross, whictr 1s in fact
attached to the top of the arch facing the papal arms over the
entrance to the stairs — a typical application of the Baroque
principle of ‘extended action’.
This principle is most brilliantly exemplified in two of
Bernini's works in ecclesiastical architecture: the Cappella
Cornaro and the church of S. Andrea al Quirinale. The Cap-
pella Cornaro, decorated for the Venetian Cardinal Federico
Cornaro in the second half of the 1640s, occupies the left
transept of the church of S. Maria della Vittoria, which had
been rebuilt by Maderno. Its central feature ts the group of
sculpture representing the vision of St Theresa, probably the
most complete expression of mystical ecstasy achieved by a
Baroque artist in any medium. The group is set in a niche lit
from above by a concealed window — the daylight is now
replaced by artificial lighting — enclosed in a projecting aedicule
flanked by green marble columns, supporting a_ richly
ornamented entablature and a broken and slightly curved
pediment. The entablature is carried round the side walls of the
chapel, which contain reliefs showing deceased members of the
Cornaro family meditating and disputing. On the vault 1s a
fresco of the Holy Ghost surrounded by angels, painted by
Guido Ubaldini, after a drawing by Bernini.
The whole scheme is unified first by the colour which spreads
through the marbling, the gilt decoration, and the fresco, and
34 Coloured marble group of members of the Cornaro family by Bernini in
the Cornaro Chapel, S. Maria della Vittoria, Rome
secondly by the way the different sections are linked together by
the dramatic action: the rays which fall on St Theresa seem to
emanate from the Holy Ghost on the vault and, though the
members of the Cornaro family in the ‘boxes’ do not actually
look at the miraculous scene, this is clearly the subject of their
disputation. The illusionism of the settings in which they are
shown is almost frightening. Marble is made to represent red
velvet cushions and yellow silk hangings, and the background is
a piece of architecture actually carved in relief but in false
perspective, which is only normal in painting. The three arts
have become inextricably intermingled.
The church of S. Andrea al Quirinale was built for the
Noviciate of the Jesuits between 1658 and 1670 and is the most
perfect of the three small churches designed by Bernini during
the pontificate of Alexander VII.!! In plan it is a pure oval, with
two unusual features: the shorter axis leads to the altar, and the
ends of the cross-axis are blocked by solid piers between
chapels, instead of being continued, as was the case with earlier
oval churches, into the hollow of the chapel. The walls of the
central area are panelled with marble of a very delicate pink and
articulated with Corinthian pilasters. As in the colonnade of St
Peter’s the entablature swings round unbroken towards the
opening leading to the high altar, where it breaks forward
slightly. The martyrdom of St Andrew is depicted in a painting
by Giuglielmo Cortese over the altar, strongly lit from a dome
which is invisible from the main body of the church, and the
figure of the saint, life-size in stucco, floats in the broken
34
417
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37
36
172
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35 Right S. Andrea al Quirinale. Rome by Bernini. 1658-70. Exterior (see
plan plate 417)
36 Below right Palazzo Flavio Chigi. Rome. by Bernim. Engraving as
onginally built. begun 1664
pediment over the opening to the chancel. gazing towards the
heavenly Host which awaits him. in gilt stucco at the top of the
dome, round the edge of the lantern. over which the dove of the
Holv Ghost is enclosed in a glory of gilt ravs. The main lines of
the architecture are again simple. but the effect is one of
complete calm and harmony.
The exterior is as apparently simple and as subtle as the
interior. [he oval plan is clearly visible in the cylinder of the
central space. surrounded by the ring of chapels. above which
rise the bold console buttresses. and the facade reflects these
two component elements of the church: the entablature of the
central space is carried on over the aedicule which covers the
entrance and the line of the chapels in the porch, an oval which
echoes that of the chancel] in the interior.
Bernini transformed the appearance of the Borgo by creating
the Piazza of St Peter's. and he left his mark on other parts of
Rome by the fountains and palaces which he built. The Fontana
del Tritone in front of the Palazzo Barberini is a pure work of
sculpture. butin that of the Four Rivers in the Piazza Navona he
created a setting of sculpture for the central architectural
feature. the obelisk. and produced a monument which
dominates the most famous Baroque square in Rome.
Of the two palaces that he built neither survives as he
intended it. One. Montecitorio. was finished later by Carlo
Fontana. who changed the plans and, as it stands.!* it is
remarkable only for the bold manner in which the architect
broke the front into three sections. of which the two outer ones
slope back from the central] one at a slight angle. and for the
original idea of building it on a ground floor composed of
rocks. The other, the Palazzo Chigi. was bought in the eight-
eenth century by the Odescalchi family. who destroyed its
carefully thought-out proportions by doubling the length of the
facade and adding a second entrance. As originally designed by
Bernini it consisted of a central section of seven bays with a
rusticated ground floor and above it a giant Order of composite
pilasters. This was a novelty in the designing of Roman palaces.
which had almost invariably followed the model of the Palazzo
Farnese with its rows of pedimented windows.
Bernini applied the same method of composition with even
greater effect in the designs which he prepared 1n 1664-65 for
the completion of the Louvre at the request of Lours XIV. His
first scheme was a Very bold design consisting of two projecting
outer wings enclosing a deep concave bay. from the middle of
which projected a strong convex section. This was altogether
too free for the taste of the French and. after a variant with a
single concave central bay. Bernini produced his final design.
which consisted of a single colossal rectangular block broken
into five sections: two projecting pavilions, articulated by a
giant Order. linked by two short wings without any Order to a
central pavilion which was given prominence by having en-
gaged columns. whereas the end pavilions onlv have pilasters.
The whole structure was to stand on the rocky base that Bernini
had used for Montecitorio, but here it was to be set in a moat.
This vast project — perhaps the grandest of all Baroque palace
designs — was never even begun. but the design. which was
engraved the year Bernim left Paris.!> was to have an influence
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Rome 37
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on palace design throughout Europe, from William III's
Hampton Court to the eighteenth-century royal palaces in
Madrid and Stockholm.
Borromini
The contrast between Bernini and Borromini could hardly be
greater.!* Bernini had all the qualities needed to make a great
career: Borromini had none. except a genius for architecture.
He was neurotic. difficult. touchy. suffered from something
very near persecution mania. and quarrelled with most of his
patrons and friends. He never succeeded in gaining the favour
of the popes in whose pontificates he lived. except for a short
time after the accession of Innocent X. and then only because
Bernini was out of favour as a protégé of the Barberini. He hada
few devoted friends and admirers. of whom the most important
was Virgilio Spada. who. as prior of the Oratory of S. Filippo
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Fountain of the Four Rivers, 1648-51, and the church of S. Agnese, begun
in 1652 by Carlo and Girolamo Rainaldi, continned by Borromini, the
fagade modified by Bernini and the dome completed by Carlo Rainaldi
Neri, gave him one of his greatest opportunities and, as adviser
to Innocent X, obtained for him the commission to restore the
church of S. Giovanni in Laterano, his one great public
commission. Of a different kind was Fioravante Martinelli, the
author of one of the most famous guide-books to Rome, who in
his final redaction of this work constantly refers to Borromini
and defends him from the attacks of his critics. But mainly
Borromini worked away from the limelight of papal Rome. His
first patrons were the poor Spanish Discalced Trinitarians of S.
Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, then the Oratorians, a body of men
prominent for their culture and learning, but also for their pious
and simple way of life. The Archiginnasio or University of
Rome and the Collegio di Propaganda Fide were bodies of
importance, but their buildings — though made splendid
aesthetically by Borromini — were nothing, in public esteem,
compared with St Peter's.
As architects the two men were equally different. Bernini was
the master of the Baroque as a combination of all the arts ona
vast scale. Borromim worked with architectural forms alone,
without colour, rich materials, or dramatic lighting. If Bernini's
creations were like operas, Borromini's are like a fugue for
harpsichord, exquisitely thought out and perfect in every detail,
complicated but governed by the most rigid rules.
In his own day — and for nearly three hundred years after his
death — Borromini was accused of being a licentious eccentric,
who debauched architecture by breaking all the rules of the
ancients and working entirely by caprice. In fact nothing could
be more contrary to the truth. He declared that his works were
based on the study of the great works of antiquity, and it can be
shown that this is true. The difference between him and, let us
say, Vignola is that Vignola followed the rules laid down by the
notoriously conservative Vitruvius and chose as his models the
more ‘Classical’ ancient Roman buildings — the Pantheon, the
Temple of Fortuna Virilis, and so on — whereas Borromini,
although he also appealed to Vitruvius, did so mainly on
technical points and took as his models the more fantastic or
more “Baroque works of antiquity, such as Hadrian’s Villa, or
the tomb near Capua, known as the Conocchia. It is even
possible that he knew drawings of buildings such as the circular
Temple of Venus at Baalbek, and it is certain that he took as
models reconstructions of buildings of this kind made by the
Milanese architect Giovanni Battista Montano, whose draw-
ings were available at the time in Rome and were engraved
during Borromini's lifetime.
But if he could claim legitimacy, so to speak, for his creations
by an appeal to the ancients, a more important fact is that he
based even his more complicated and fantastic designs on a
strictly controlled geometrical system. He believed that archi-
tecture was based on Nature and, though he never explained
what he meant by this, it is probable that his conception of
Nature was close to that of his great contemporary, Galileo,
who wrote that ‘the Great book of Nature 1s written in the
language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles,
circles, and other geometrical figures’. Galileo was much read in
intellectual and artistic circles in Rome in Borromini's time, and
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there may well be a direct link between his idea of Nature and
Borromini’s obsession with geometry.
Borromini’s real name was Francesco Castello. He was born
at Bissone on Lake Lugano in 1599 and came of a family of
masons which included Domenico Fontana and Carlo Mad-
erno. At an early age — possibly at nine — he went to Milan.
where he would certainly have seen — and may have taken part
in — the activities of the great building-yard which was at work
on the completion of the cathedral, one of the last great works
Rome 39
to be erected in Italy in the Gothic style. He arrived in Rome
probably at the end of 1618 and was set to work as a stucco-
worker under Maderno, who was supervising the decoration of
the vestibule of St Peter's. This work brought him into contact
for the first time with the architecture of Michelangelo, and we
know from his biographers that he took full advantage of this
38 Left Palazzo Barberini. Rome. Window nex! to foggia designed by
Borromini c. 1630-33; engraving
39 Below left St Peter's. Engraving of a window in the attic designed by
Maderno
40 Below St Peter's. Engraving of windows in the attic designed by
Michelangelo
opportunity and studied the apses and dome of the church with
passionate interest.
When in 1625 Maderno was commissioned to build the
Palazzo Barberini. he took Borromini with him, no longer as a
stucco-worker, but as his chief draughtsman. and itis clear that
very soon he was allowed a hand in designing certain parts of
the palace. The oval staircase in the right-hand wing was
certainly planned by Borromini and, although 1t Is basically a
variant of an earlier staircase in the Quirinal. it is a remarkable
achievement structurally.
Borromini was also responsible for two windows in the bays
which link the loggia to the wings of the palace. and these are
startlingly novel in conception. The basic idea of the design goes
back to Michelangelo’s windows in the attic of St Peter's. which
have an oval —in some cases enclosing a shel! — inserted into the
flat hood to the window. Maderno, when he came to build the
facade of the church. followed Michelangelo’s pattern. but
modified it by enclosing the opening in a pediment, thus
softening the contrast between the opening and the flat hood
which in Michelangelo's design seem almost to press against
each other. Borromini made two crucial changes in this design:
he ran the lines of the pediment and the opening into a single
continuous feature, and he canted the sides of the window, so
that they project at 45 to the wall. In this way he established a
movement in both the horizontal and the vertical planes
through the whole composition. He was to use this motive
throughout his life. constantly producing new variations on It.
till he gave it its most mature expression in the hood over the
door to the Collegio di Propaganda Fide. built in the 1650s.
Here the movement is made more subtle and more continuous
40
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4i Top left S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Rome, by Borromini, the
cloister, 1634-38
42 Below left S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane by Borromini. Interior of the
church, 1638-41
43 Above S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, plan by Borromini
44 Opposite S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane by Borromini, interior of the
dome
owing to the fact that in plan the hood 1s designed on a concave
curve instead of three straight sections at angles of 45° as at the
Palazzo Barberini, so that it forms a continuous three-
dimensional twist. In this way Borromini converts the feeling of
pressure and conflict in Michelangelo’s design into a fluent,
unbroken Baroque movement.
In 1634 Borromini received his first independent commis-
sion for the building of the church and monastery of S. Carlo alle
Quattro Fontane, generally known as S. Carlino from its small
size. In spite of the extremely awkward and cramped site
Borromini produced a completely satisfying solution to the
problems presented to him. On the right (west) of the site he
inserted a small and simple but ingeniously designed cloister,
with its corners cut off by slightly convex bays, and on the left a
church which was revolutionary in many respects.
Basically the plan of the church is an oval, which becomes
clearly visible in the dome, but a comparison with earlier oval
churches, such as S. Giacomo degli Incurabili, shows the
ingenuity and liveliness of Borromini's plan. It consists of an
oblong central space with the addition of two semi-circular
members for the choir and vestibule, and two half-ovals for the
main side chapels. In the corners of the church formed tn this
way Borromini has inserted two smaller chapels, a spiral
staircase leading to the campanile, and a passage to the monas-
tery.
The shape of the central space of the church 1s complex
because the bays linking the arches over choir, chapels, and
vestibule are neither straight nor simply curved, but consist of
4]
46
42 Partl1 Italy
two side bays projecting on concave curves and a straight
central bay. This complex plan 1s simplified at the next level.
which consists of four arches and four broad pendentives, and
the simplicity is increased in the clear oval of the dome.
In the walls of the church Borromini has introduced a
deliberate ambiguity, which enables the two levels to be read
differently. The upper level reads clearly as four half-domes
separated by pendentives, but below the entablature the eye is
first caught by the four ‘triptychs’ on the diagonals, each
defined by four columns and formed by a central bay with door,
niche, and statue, flanked by two simpler concave bays with
small niches and plain panels over them. This sets up a sort of
counterpoint between the two levels of the wall, because the
‘triptychs’ spread horizontally beyond the limits of the
pendentives into the zones below the half-domes.
Free and complex though the plan of the church appears to
be, it was actually arrived at by a series of geometrical manipul-
ations which can be traced in Borromint's preliminary draw-
ings.’° The skeleton of the plan consists of two equilateral
triangles (ABC, A’BC) with a common side and two circles
inscribed in them. Two further arcs of circles (D, E and D’E’)
are drawn with their centres at the apexes of the triangles B and
A
C, and these complete an oval which defines the dome. The
apexes of the triangles (A, A’, and B, C) fall at the midpoints of
the apses and half-ovals which form the subsidiary elements of
the church, and the axes of the small chapels lie along lines
which join these apexes to the centres of the circles. In this way
the whole plan is evolved from the simple elements of two
triangles and two circles.
The dome of the church follows the simple line of the oval as
defined in the above scheme, but its decoration is ingenious. It
consists of coffering composed of crosses, hexagons, and
lozenges, a pattern recorded by Serlio on the basis of the early
Christian mosaic in the vault of S. Costanza, but Borromini was
the first architect to use it in a fully three-dimensional form and
to apply it to a dome instead of a flat ceiling or barrel-vault. It is
a typical example of Borromini’s basic principle of designing
complex forms in simple materials.
The fagade of the church was not actually begun till 1665, but
there is conclusive evidence to show that from the first Borro-
mini intended it to have a curved plan of the type on which it
was finally built. It is therefore one of the earliest, as well as one
of the most mature, examples of the fully curved Baroque
facade. There is, however, reason to think that the upper storey
was not completed according to Borromini’s design, and the
oval painting carrted by angels is quite foreign to his style. It is,
incidentally, copied almost exactly from Bernini’s high altar at
Castel Gandolfo, and i( is inconceivable that Borromini, at the
end of his life, should have borrowed in this way from his rival.
Borromini’s achievement at S. Carlino attracted some atten-
tion, not only because of the aesthetic qualities of the design,
but because of the attention which the architect had given to
practical details and for the relatively low cost of the whole
building. As a result he was invited in 1637 by the Oratorians to
complete their Roman house by adding to the church an
Oratory for musical performances, a library, and accom-
modation for the Fathers.!° The most remarkable feature of the
whole complex is the fagade of the Oratory itself, which, like S.
Carlino, is on a curve, but in this case a single, slow curve.
45 Left Oratorio di S. Filippo Neri, Rome, by Borromini, the facade,
1637—40, showing also part of Fausto Rughesi’s fagade of S. Maria in
Valhicella (Chiesa Nuova), [605 (see also engraving on title page)
46 Top S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, diagram of the plan by Borromini
47 Opposite Stupinigi, near Turin, by Filippo Juvarra, !729-33. Entrance
galeway
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Borromini was instructed not to use columns, so that the facade
would not compete in importance with that of the church, but
he turned this limitation to advantage and produced a fagade
which has the tense quality of a sheet of metal bent under
pressure. This effect is heightened by the smoothness of the
brick-work, which is composed of very thin bricks with the
minimum of mortar between them. On this facade Borromini
uses a new form of pediment. a sort of fusion of the straight and
curved pediments which Michelangelo had used. one inside the
other on the Porta Pia. As in the window of the Palazzo
Barberini, Borromini has taken two separate. almost conflicting
motifs from Michelangelo and fused them into a single
continuous whole.
Borromini’s principle of evolving a complex plan on a strict
geometrical basis reaches its culmination in the church of S.
Ivo. He added the church to the existing court of the Sapienza
between 1642 and 1650.'" As at S. Carlino the plan is composed
of equilateral triangles and circles, but here the two triangles
interpenetrate to form a six-pointed star — the symbol of
wisdom — and a hexagonal central space. Round this space are
six bays. three composed of semi-circles drawn on the sides of
the hexagon. the other three of a more complex form. including
arcs of circles drawn with their centres on the apexes of the
triangles. The dome is formed by simply shrinking the ground
plan gradually tll it reaches the lantern. and the result is a
building of extraordinary homogeneity, dominated by the line
of the entablature which leads the eye on a continuous
movement round the whole space. The recent restoration has
brought the church back to its ongina!l whiteness. no longer
disturbed by the coarse. painted marbling added in the
mid-nineteenth century.
Clear though the general articulation of the interior may be it
is not as simple as it appears at first sight. The concave bays are
slightly more than semicircular, so that the angle formed by the
entablature at the point where one bay joins another ts shghtly
less than a nght angle and the cornice appears to be pressing
into the central space. The wall surfaces are broken up in a
variety of different ways: a single tall niche for the high altar. a
small niche enclosing double doors and covered by a pediment
in the two other concave bays, and a large niche with a gallery
over it on the bays which are convex inwards. A string-course
dividing the walls into two almost equal parts runs all round the
building but is interrupted by the high altar bay. The pilasters
are disposed in a complex rhythm: pairs at nght angles at the
corners where the bays join, further full pilasters in the concave
bavs. but broken pilasters on each side of the balcomes.
Further, the broken pilasters are separated from the corner
pairs by a gap slightly less wide than the corresponding space in
the concave bays.
Even in the interior of the dome there are concealed sub-
tleties. The concave bays are carried up to the lantern without
any basic change in their form. by the simple process of
reducing their size: but with the bays over the galleries the
problem is more complex. At the level of the entablature they
are convex inwards, but at the top they have become concave,
so that they can be absorbed into the circle round the foot of the
lantern, the change being masked by the large window which
allows the architect to move from the straight-convex-straight
48 Opposite Turin, the Superga by Filippo Juvarra, begun 1717. Detail of
tower
Rome 45
49 Palazzo della Sapienza, Rome, plan showing Borromini‘s church, begun
in 1642, set into the 16th-century university building
plan of the entablature and attic through a zone with three
straight elements, of which the central one - the window —
masks the change from convex to concave, through being open
instead of solid.
The symbolism implied by the star of wisdom in the plan 1s
carried on into the decoration, which includes the cherubim.
palm and pomegranates of the Temple of Solomon. and also
allusions to the arms of Alexander VI]. under whom the
decoration was carried out. The same type of symbolism
appears on the exterior, one of Borromimi’s most fantastic
inventions, where the spiral ramp above the lantern, like a
Mesopotamian ziggurat, was an accepted symbol for the Tower
of Wisdom, ending in the Flame of Truth, supporting the Cross
on an orb.
Even this apparently wild invention is based on ancient
models and a strict observance of geometry. The lantern, with
its concave bays separated by coupled columns, is like the
Temple of Venus at Baalbek and also one of Montano’s
reconstructions of ancient buildings. and the plans of the
lantern, the stepped roof below it. and the spiral ramp above it
were all drawn out with the compasses on simple geometrical
principles, as can be seen from the original drawings for some of
them. which are still preserved in the Albertina in Vienna.
The lower part of the dome. which looks like a drum, in fact
encloses the cupola itself, according to a method of building
which Borromini would have seen in sixteenth-century Mil-
anese buildings. In this case it was almost forced on him.
because the site was so narrow that he could not include chapels
to buttress the dome. the lateral thrust of which is taken by the
dead weight of the masonry between the cupola and the cusped
exterior.
The same principles of construction and design are to be
found in the dome of S. Andrea delle Fratte. built by Borromim
between 1654 and 1665. Here again Borromini has started from
an ancient model. in this case the Conocchia, an ancient Roman
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tomb near Capua, but he has amplified the movement of the
original by making the central section curved instead of
straight. Beside the dome. which was to have had a lantern with
deep re-entrant bays. Borromini set up a campanile which is a
remarkable example of the mixture of Classical and unclassical
elements in his architecture. The lower stage is a cylinder
articulated with Ionic columns, containing alternately open and
closed bays. of a type known in ancient Roman bas-reliefs. but
this is topped by a structure of concave bays. separated by
rectangular piers which merge into winged cherubs. Above this
is a crowning feature with a flame-like element enclosing the
arms of the patron, the Marchese del Bufalo. and covered by his
coronet.
Borromini’s last phase is best illustrated by his work on the
Collegio di Propaganda Fide. where he built a new chapel -
replacing one built by Bernini in the 1630s — and added the
facade on the street. In the chapel he developed certain ideas
which he had adumbrated in the Oratory, creating a rect-
angular space with rounded corners. with a low coved vault
divided by ribs which cross the space diagonally. leaving a
hexagonal panel in the middle. which ts filled with a fresco. The
facade is yet another instance of Borrominis combination of
traditional and novel elements. The columns which surround
the windows are of the true Roman Doric Order without bases
—a type hardly ever used in Rome in the seventeenth century
but they are disposed at angles which recall Michelangelo's
Sforza Chapel rather than any ancient Roman building. Most
complex of all is the entrance door. In plan the piers are half-
hexagons with slightly curved sides: in elevation they follow
Michelangelo's revolutionary pilasters in the Ricetto of the
Laurentian Library in Florence in that the ‘pilasters’ shrink
towards the bottom and their capitals are narrower than the
shaft. but. unlike Michelangelo's piers. they are canted so that
they initiate a movement along a concave line running through
the hood of the door. which has the three-dimensional curve
described above.
Borromini was much less active in the field of domestic
architecture than in church building. but one of his surviving
works must be mentioned. the colonnade in the Palazzo Spada.
The similarity of the colonnade to Bernini's Scala Regia is
immediately striking. but it is now known that Borromini's
work was executed in 1652-53, that 1s to say ten years before the
planning of the Vatican staircase. so that he was the innovator
in this use of false perspective: but only an innovator in a
limited sense. because the idea had been applied in a more
restricted way by Bramante in S. Maria presso S. Satiro in
Milan, and by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger in the entrance
to the Palazzo Farnese more than a century earlier, and further.
Borromini probably based his design on one of Montano’s
drawings of ancient ‘temples’. What is surprising. however. 1s
that in Montano’s plan, though the columns grow shorter and
closer together. there would have been no effect of illusion.
because the visitor would have come in at the narrow end of the
50 Opposite S. Ivo della Sapienza. Rome. by Borromini. Exterior showing
the dome and lantern
51 Top right S. Andrea delle Fratte, Rome. dome and campanile by
Borromini, begun 1654
52 Right Collegio di Propaganda Fide, Rome, by Borromini, detail of
facade with main door
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colonnade and would have been looking, so to speak, down the
wrong end of the telescope. It was Borromini’s invention to
apply the plan to the creation of this peculiarly brilliant effect of
deception, which is completely convincing if seen from the door
to the library of the palace, the point to which the visitor 1s
automatically led.
In his last years Borromini’s illness became more marked. He
cut himself off almost completely, even from his friends, and
spent all his time shut up in his studio working at plans, which
he probably realized would never be executed. At the same time
he destroyed many drawings which he had made previously for
fear that his rivals might steal them and use them for their own
purposes. Finally, in a fit of despair, he tried to kill himself by
running himself through with a sword. He lived for seven hours,
long enough to dictate to his confessor an account of what had
led him to take his life, an account of almost unbelievably calm
objectivity. This ability to maintain complete control, even
when in the grip of violent emotions — and even pain — has its
counterpart in the detachment with which he could control even
his most fantastic ideas in architecture. In his life he may have
lost the battle between emotions and reason, but in his art he
attained a supreme synthesis of the two conflicting factors.
53 Above Palazzo Spada, Rome, false perspective colonnade by Borromini,
1652-53
$4 Right Palazzo Spada, by Borromini, plan of the false perspective
colonnade
Pietro da Cortona
The third of the creators of Baroque architecture, Pietro
Berettini (1596-1669), usually called Pietro da Cortona from
his birthplace, was in the first place a painter, who actually built
relatively little in comparison with his two great contempor-
aries, but he created an individual style, quite distinct from
those of Bernini and Borromini."®
In his native town he may have become aware of architecture
through his uncle Filippo, whose only surviving building, a
palace in Cortona, shows a sensitive use of rustication, which is
in a certain way related to Cortona’s own mature work; but ata
very early age he went to Florence and in 1612 or 1613 to Rome.
During these early years he studied painting under two very
undistinguished painters, Andrea Commodi and Baccio Ciarpi,
and there is no evidence to show how or from whom he
obtained his training in architecture. In Florence he studied
Michelangelo’s architecture, particularly the Ricetto of the
Laurenziana, of which echoes are to be found in his mature
works, and probably also the works of Florentine architects of
the next generation, particularly Buontalenti and Cigoli. In
Rome he made drawings of ancient buildings; but he does not
seem to have learnt much from the architects active in Rome
during his youth.
The influence of ancient architecture is particularly apparent
in the buildings which he included in his paintings — though it 1s
antiquity seen through the eyes of Raphael — but that is perhaps
natural, since they usually represent Classical subjects and it
was no doubt by design that Cortona chose a severe Doric
Order for the temple in the Age of Bronze in the Pitti to suggest
not only antiquity in a general sense but specifically an early
stage in the history of man.
In the buildings which he actually realized in brick and stone
his style is much freer and, given the mystery of his tratning in
architecture, it is surprising to find that from the beginning it 1s
both mature and original.
The date of his earliest building, the Vigna Sacchetti, now
destroyed, is not known, but itis generally thought to have been
designed before 1630. It is remarkably bold in design for its
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55 The Vigna Sacchelli, Rome, (destroyed) by Pietro da Cortona (from an
engraving), probably designed before 1630
date. The central block with the large niche is derived from
Bramantes Nicchione di Belvedere, but the addition of the
curving wings was quite new. The open loggias at the ends of the
building are of a type unknown in Roman architecture of the
period, though the apses cut off by colonnades incorporate
ideas which Cortona could have learnt from Palladio’s book on
ancient baths. The Vigna is important as being probably the
earliest instance of a curved facade produced in Rome, though
the idea had been hinted at by Antonio da Sangallo the
Younger in the Porta Santo Spinto and the bank of the same
name. It is also interesting to notice that Cortona has already
evolved the particular form of curve which he was to use in all
his later works. with a straight section in the middle and fairly
sharp curves at the ends, as opposed to the steady slow curve
used by Borromini.
His only other work in secular architecture was the door at
the end of the terrace on the north side of the Palazzo Barberini.
Originally this stood in the wall which separated the stable
court from the terrace. so that the pediment would have stood
out against the sky, an arrangement which would have given
emphasis to its unusual form, which is Cortona’s version of the
double pediment used by Borromini in the facade of the
Oratory and elsewhere. The door itself has the kind of refined
rustication, with a small layer projecting beyond the main front
surface, which was to be typical of Cortona’s work and which
may owe something to the palace built by his uncle in Cortona.
In the windows which flank the door the architect again
produces a variant of a theme used by Borromimn. in this case
the window on the Palazzo Barberini itself; but the curved
element enclosing the Barberini bee is somewhat feeble in
design. Much more typical of Cortona’s style are the consoles
supported by guttae on which the windows stand.
In 1634 Cortona, who had been elected president (Principe)
of the Academy of St Luke, was given permission to restore the
crypt of the little church of S. Martina, near the Forum, which
belonged to the Academy, in order to erect there his own tomb.
While the necessary excavations were being made, the body of
S. Martina was discovered and. as relics were highly revered
during this phase of the Counter-Reformation, the pope de-
cided that something grander than the proposed restoration
was demanded. The pope’s nephew, Cardinal Francesco Bar-
berini, undertook to finance not only the restoration of the
crypt but also the construction above it of a church to be
dedicated to St Luke and to contain over the high altar the
canvas of St Luke painting the Virgin, then thought to be from
the hand of Raphael himself, which had been presented to the
Academy by an earlier president.
Cortona had already been involved in an earlier project for a
church on the same site, which was to have been circular in form
and was probably destined to be a mausoleum for the family of
Pope Gregory XV (Ludovisi). ]t is significant for the sources of
Cortona’s style that this design was directly based on one of
Buontalenti’s projects for the Cappella dei Principi, which was
being built on to S. Lorenzo when Cortona was in Florence as
a boy. When Cardinal Francesco Barberini took over the
project, the circular plan was abandoned in favour of a Greek
cross, but there is some evidence from the surviving drawings
Somer a ie
Italy
56 Top left SS. Luca e Martina, Rome, exterior by Pietro da Cortona,
begun 1635
57 Left SS. Luca e Martina, plan by Pietro da Cortona
58 Above SS. Luca e Martina, inlerior showing dome
that at this stage it was still planned to make the church a
mausoleum, now for the Cardinal and perhaps other members
of his family.
The church was long in building — the decoration was still
being carried out in the last decades of the century — but it is
certain that the foundations, including those of the fagade, were
complete by 1635. This is important, because it shows that
Cortona had proposed a curved fagade by this date, which 1s
earlier than the first datable scheme for S. Carlino, though it
must be remembered that Borromini may have been planning
the facade of the church from the time that he was first
commissioned to build the monastery, that is to say, 1634.
However, the question of actual priority is not fundamental,
because it is clear that various architects were playing with the
idea at the same time.
|
56
‘a
nd
Cortona’s facade reveals many of his characteristics as an
architect. The central bay is planned on the curve that he had
used in the Vigna Sacchetti but inverted, that 1s to say. convex
as opposed to concave. Further it is framed with two rect-
angular blocks which seem almost to squeeze it in on both sides.
Cortona intended to build two further bays outside these
blocks. sloping back from the line of the fagade, which would
have given the whole building more normal proportions and
would have relaxed the somewhat over-compact impression
which the fagade gives in its present form. The fagade was not
finished till after Cortona’s death, and the group of sculpture
which crowns it is almost certainly not from his design. It has
even been suggested that he may have intended to finish the
front with a broad pediment, and this may well be correct.
The character of the facade depends in great part on the
almost sculptura] manner in which the actual surface ts treated.
In the middle section coupled columns are set into the wall.
according to the formula invented by Michelangelo in the
Ricetto of the Laurenziana. but here the columns are spaced
out and separated by projecting blocks, carved with reliefs. This
arrangement intensifies the effect of pressure which appears in
the design of the whole fagade. Vertically the two storeys of the
fagade are united by the strong lines of the columns, even
though these are interrupted by the clearly defined entablature:
but there are equally clear horizontal links formed by the string-
courses which seem to be carried on behind the columns and
one element of which is brought forward into the pediment over
the door. The monumental quality of the whole front is
emphasized by the fact that it is constructed in the rough, tawny
travertine which was Cortona’s favourite material.
In plan the upper church of SS. Luca e Martina is almost a
Greek cross — though the nave and choir are slightly longer than
the transepts — but the ends of all the elements are rounded off in
the same curve that Cortona had used at the Vigna Sacchetti,
though the middle section is much shorter. What is remarkable
about the interior is the treatment of the walls. The Order 1s a
rather heavy Roman Ionic, that is to say. the form with the
volutes projecting at 45 . Round the apse the articulation con-
Rome 51]
59 Left SS. Luca e Martina, interior, begun 1635. Stucco decoration
finished by Ciro Ferri after Cortona’s death
60 Below S. Maria della Pace, Rome, facade, by Pielro da Cortona,
1656-57
sists of pairs of columns set back under an entablature. as on
the facade, but without the intervening blocks. These sections are
joined to the crossing by piers articulated with pilasters and
with broken pilasters in the corners of the re-entrant bays. For
the actual crossing Cortona returns to full columns, this time
standing free. The result is an elaborate system of layering the
walls. At the back is the wall behind the inset columns: then
comes a layer formed by the entablature over these columns:
and in front of that the plane formed by the entablature over the
pilaster piers. The arrangement is complicated by the fact that
the back plane. which seems to vanish in the pilaster piers,
reappears in the bays between these piers. This method of
articulation, combined with the fact that the whole church ts in
white stucco, gives a strongly sculptural character to the
interior. different from the rich. coloured effects achieved by
Bernini and the purely architectural conceptions of Borromini.
The decoration of the half-domes at the ends of the four
members of the church is also composed of heavy, almost
sculptural, features: powerful ribs, decorated with bands of
laurel leaves. which rise between windows flanked by consoles
and covered by broken pediments enclosing round niches.
The treatment of the dome is also unusual, with ribs cutting
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60
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Part 1 Italy
across a field decorated with coffers of unusual shape. They
have semi-circular breaks in the middle of the sides, forming a
pattern like the Late-Gothic panel used by Andrea Pisano on
the doors of the Baptistery at Florence. This dome is often
quoted as the first instance of the combination of the two
methods of decorating a dome, the Gothic with ribs, and the
Classical with coffering; but in fact the decoration in SS. Lucae
Martina probably dates from after Cortona’s death and is due
to his follower, Ciro Ferri, in which case the method of
decoration in question had already been used by Bernini in his
two churches at Castel Gandolfo and Ariccia.
The lower church, containing the tomb of S. Martina, Is
treated in the same manner as the facade of the church, with
closely packed panels and inset columns, but the walls are
composed of rich marbles of different colours, cut so that the
veining forms symmetrical patterns in each panel. The dome of
the upper church shows externally a number of Michel-
angelesque features, such as the heavy triglyphs with guttae
which support the ribs, and the lonic volute motif from the
Porta Pia. The design of Cortona’s only other dome, that of S.
Carlo al Corso, built from 1668 onwards, is much simpler and is
composed of columns set back, like those in the interior of SS.
Luca e Martina. The same severe simplicity — though combined
with the use of rich marbles — appears in Cortona’s other late
architectural work the Cappella Gavotti in S. Nicola da
Tolentino.
In 1656 Cortona was commissioned by Alexander VI] to
complete the church of S. Maria della Pace. which contained his
family chapel decorated by Raphael, by reconstructing the
dome and adding a facgade.'? The problem of the fagade was
complicated by the fact that the church was flanked by two
narrow streets which ran from it at different angles, and that on
the right the apse of S. Maria dell’ Anima impinged on the site
and was only separated from the church by the narrower of the
two streets. The situation was further complicated by what can
only be described as a trafic problem. The church was a
fashionable one — and became more so when its patron became
pope — and the streets that led to it were so narrow that it was
impossible to turn a coach in any of them. Indeed the street to
the right of the church was too narrow to admit a coach at all.
and that on the left, though it was wider, did not admit of two
coaches passing. This disposition gave rise to a series of difficult
situations and the street was declared ‘one way — perhaps one
of the first instances of this procedure in history. In order to
solve this problem Cortona planned in front of the church a
piazza large enough to allow a coach to be turned — and this
involved a considerable space — and at the same time he created
a facade for the church which is one of the most ingenrous and —
in the good sense of the word — theatrical of Baroque con-
structions. The authorities of the church were able to acquire
and pull down two or three houses opposite the church, and this
enabled Cortona to lay out his square in the form of a
quadrilateral with not quite parallel ends. He then spread his
design for the fagade of the church over the whole of the largest
side of the quadrilateral. At ground level he built two small
wings, one of which contained an opening for the right-hand
street, and above these wings he made two quadrant bays,
which formed a wide concave setting for the facade itself. The
upper half of this is articulated on the same principles as at SS.
Luca e Martina, but at the lower level Cortona added a portico
which projects in a half-oval, making a strong contrast to the
upper concave bay. The play of curves is far more emphatic
61 S. Maria in Via Lata, Rome, fagade, by Pietro da Corlona, 1658-62
than in his earlier church, and the facade offers great poss-
ibilities for effects of light and shade. In the treatment of the
upper part of the facade the architect used one device which ts.
as far as I know, unique. He cut the travertine, as he had done
with the marble in the lower church of S. Martina, so that the
graining forms symmetrical patterns in the two main panels of
the facade, producing a very curious decorative effect.
Cortona’s last architectural work was the fagade and vesti-
bule which he added to the church of S. Maria in Via Lata. The
church was built over an early Christian chapel which was
supposed to incorporate the house where St Paul had been
imprisoned when he came to Rome, and in the seventeenth
century this shrine came to be an object of such veneration that
in 1658 Cortona was commissioned to restore it and make it
safely accessible to the faithful. He carried out the work in such
a way as to preserve as much as possible of the original crypt —
much more than in the lower church of S. Martina — and
contented himself with breaking down one wall to make
circulation possible and adding a few decorative features. The
work is an interesting example of the Baroque interest in the
Early Church, and it was carried out with unusual respect for
the interests of archaeology. The restoration of the Constantin-
ian Baptistery of the Lateran, carried out on the orders of
Urban VII] some years earlier, had been much more drastic and
had destroyed much archaeological evidence.
The church of S. Maria in Via Lata itself had been restored
many times, last of all in the mid seventeenth century, but its
entrance front was still unfinished. Between 1658 and 1662
Cortona added to it a vestibule, with a room above it, and built
the facade. The problem here was dominated by the fact that
the church faced on to the Corso, the main arterial road of
ancient Rome, which had never been widened. This meant that
the facade would normally be seen in sharp foreshortening.
Cortona could have got over the difficulty by curving the
facade, but the space available to him was limited, and he
probably felt that a curved fagade would not have fitted with
6]
the mile-and-a-half-long row of straight-fronted palaces which
flanked the Corso. (The church of S. Marcello, nearly opposite
to S. Mariain Via Lata, has a curved facade, but it ts set back in
a little piazza.) He therefore chose a quite different method and,
by opening up the two storeys of the lagade, created a beauti-
fully calculated eftect of light solids against dark voids. The
arrangement of the facade with a room over the vestibule goes
back to earlier examples, such as Flaminio Ponzio’s S. Sebas-
tiano and Bernini's S. Bibiana, but in the former the upper
storey is completely closed, and in the latter, though the central
bay is open, there is no deliberately worked out pattern of light
and shade. Cortona emphasizes this effect by having pairs of
free-standing colunins standing out against the darkness of the
portico on each storey. The planar effect of the actual building
is severe. but variety is added by the richness of the capitals and
entablatures and by the unusual arrangement of the upper
pediment, in which Cortona inserts an arch protruding into the
field of the pediment and so forcing the entablature — or rather
the frieze and cornice — to break upwards and follow the curve
of the arch. There were ancient precedents for this practice, of
which one certainly known to Cortona was the Triumphal Arch
at Orange, which had been studied since the late fifteenth
century and in which a similar arrangementis found on the ends
of the structure.
62 Below S. Maria in Campitelli, Rome, by Carlo Rainaldi, facade,
1663-67
63 Top right SS. Vincenzo e Anastasio, Rome, fagade, by Martino Longhi,
the Younger, 1646-50
In the vestibule the free-standing columns are repeated
against the wall of the church itself, and the two rows support a
barrel-vault with octagonal coffering. The ends are semi-
circular, and a curious feature of the design is that the coffered
vault appears to be carried on behind the apses, an effect of
ambiguity unusual in Baroque architecture and more typical of
sixteenth-century ingenuity.
Rome The last phase
Roman architecture of the mid-seventeenth century was dom-
inated by the three great figures of Bermmni. Borromini and
Pietro da Cortona, but there were other architects active at the
same period who attained a certain celebrity. though none
showed the inventiveness of the three masters.
Martino Longhi (or Lunghi) the Younger (1620-60). grand-
son of the sixteenth-century architect of the same name, added
the impressive front to the church of SS. Vincenzo e
Anastasio near the Trevi Fountain in the years 1646—50.7° In its
use of heavy full columns under a severe entablature it is
reminiscent of Pietro da Cortona, but it 1s original in the
spacing of the columns: on the lower storey the side-bays are
composed of two widely spaced columns (the outer ones are not
visible in the reproduction on plate 63) while the door is flanked
by pairs of columns close together, with the entablature broken
forward over each of them. This progression, combined with
the double curved pediment over the door, strongly emphasizes
the central bay of the composition. In the upper storey the six
inner colunins of the lower stage are repeated to form a single
bay flanked by triple columns, an arrangement which creates a
lively counterpoint between the two storeys.
Carlo Rainaldi (1611-91) is chiefly famous for building the
church of S. Maria in Campzttelli (1660- 67).7! The church 1s a
strange mixture of Baroque features and elements which come
from late sixteenth-century traditions. The fagade has a rich-
ness of movement due to the breaking of the entablature, but
this movement is discontinuous ~ forwards and backwards ~ as
in Giacomo della Porta’s facade of the Gesu, and the aedicules
which the architect introduced in the central bay, while they
62
54 Part! Italy
64 Palazzo Colonna, Rome, the salone, built by Antonio del Grande,
1654-65. Frescoes by Giovanni Coli and Filippo Gherardi, 1675-78
emphasize this section, seem almost detached from the rest of
the facade. In fact they derive from a north-Italian, sixteenth-
century tradition, as it appeared, for instance, in Tibaldi's S.
Fedele in Milan. The effect of the interior is made dramatic by
the use of tall columns standing free of the walls, but the plan 1s
somewhat untidily composed of a succession of square, rect-
angular, and semi-circular spaces which are not clearly defined
in themselves and do not flow smoothly one into the other.
Rainaldi also remodelled the apse of S. Maria Maggiore,
after a project by Bernini had been rejected, and was involved in
the planning and construction of the twin churches on the
Piazza del Popolo — S. Maria di Monte Santo and S. Maria dei
Miracoli — begun in 1662, though Bernini played some part in
the final design of Monte Santo. In beth these projects
Rainaldi’s style is more sophisticated and more Classical than
in S. Maria in Campitell, as is exemplified in the use of free-
standing porticoes, a very unusual feature in Rome at this date.
In secular architecture the most important contributions
were made by Antonio del Grande (active 1647-71), an assis-
tant of Borromini, who has not received the attention that he
deserves.** His most spectacular work 1s the gallery of the
Palazzo Colonna, begun in 1654 but only finished in the late
1670s, when the vault was frescoed by Giovanni Battista Coli
and Filippo Gherardi, with assistance from Giovanni Paolo
Schor in the decorative parts. The result is one of the most
splendid decorative ensembles of the Roman Baroque. The
plan of the gallery 1s unusual in that it is laid out in three
sections with two square anterooms, one at each end of the
main hall, connected with it by openings flanked by free-
standing columns, an arrangement which influenced Jules
Hardouin Mansart in his design of the Galerie des Glaces at
Versailles and Fischer von Erlach in the Hofbibliothek at
Vienna.
Antonio del Grande was also responsible for a new type of
entrance to palaces, much grander than was normal in earlier
generations, which took account of the fact that coaches had
become the normal means of transport for the rich and that
they were cumbersome and difficult to turn. In the wing added to
the Palazzo Doria-Pamphilh facing on to the Piazza del Collegio
Romano (1659-61) he arranged a spacious vestibule into which
a coach could be driven, so that the visitor could alight under
cover and would find himself facing up the staircase which runs
parallel to the facade of the palace. It is possible that he took the
idea from Borromini, who planned such a vestibule in his
unexcecuted projects for the Palazzo Carpegna near the
Fontana di Trevi and the Palazzo Pamphili on the Piazza
Navona, but del Grande seems to have been the first architect
actually to put into execution this plan, which was to be widely
imitated and developed in other parts of [taly and in Central
Europe.
In the last twenty years of the seventeenth century Roman
architects were sharply divided into two distinct, even oppos-
ing, parties. One group, which included the architect and
painter Antonio Gherardi and the Jesuit Andrea Pozzo, dev-
eloped the ideas of the “Founding Fathers’ in a bold and
unusual manner. The other, led by Carlo’ Fontana, produced
the new moderate style — the ‘International Late Baroque’ —
which was to have a wide influence outside as well as inside
Italy.
Gherardi’s originality appears in two chapels which he built
in Roman churches, the Cappella Avila in S. Maria in Traste-
vere (before 1686), and the Cappella di S. Cecilia in S. Carlo ai
Catinari (1691). The eartier chapel is the more dramatic,
particularly in the audacious treatment of the lantern. This is
composed of a cylindrical outer shell and an inner ring of Ionic
columns supported by stucco angels floating against a feigned
balustrade which runs round the actual cupola. Gherardi in fact
combines Bernini's use of concealed light with his fusion of
sculpture and architecture and carries the effect to a new point
of ingenuity. The lower part of the chapel, on the other hand, is
composed of architectural features more in the spirit of Borro-
mini, though the altar, which consists of a false-perspective
colonnade in coloured marbles, includes elements borrowed
from both Borromini and Bernini. The Cappella di S. Cecilia 1s
more completely Berninesque, with angels drawing aside stucco
curtains from the window, and a vista through the oval cut-off
dome, on which sit trumpeting angels, to a rectangular chamber
—lit by a concealed window — which has on its ceiling the dove of
the Holy Ghost in a radiance of white stucco rays surrounded
by a floral wreath.
Andrea Pozzo, usually known as Padre Pozzo, though in fact
64
150
251
65
7, 66
65 Below S. Mania in Trastevere, Rome, Cappella Avila. by Antonio
Gherardi, before 1686
66 Right S. Ignazio, Rome, the altar of S. Luigi Gonzaga by Andrea
Pozzo, c. 1700, from an engraving
he remained all his life a lay-brother, was not strictly speaking
an architect, but the two volumes of his Perspectiva Pictorum et
Architectorum, published in 1693 and 1698, exercised a wide
influence on architects throughout Europe (translations were
printed in English. German and Flemish, and a manuscript
version exists in Chinese). In addition to diagrams showing how
the Orders should be drawn in perspective, the treatise contains
designs for altars. tabernacles and temporary structures for
feste, designed on complex curvilinear plans and composed of
architectural features broken up with the greatest freedom, 1n a
spirit akin to that of Antonio Gherard1.
His most important works were executed for the two prin-
cipal Jesuit churches in Rome: in the Gesu he made the altar of
S. Ignatius in the left transept — one of the richest altars in Rome
and in S. Ignazio he painted the apse. dome and nave vault
with frescoes illustrating the missionary work stimulated by St
Ignatius in all parts of the world (1685-94). In 1702 Pozzo was
called to Vienna, where he decorated the Jesuit church. now the
University Church, and painted the vast ceiling of the sa/one in
the Liechtenstein Summer Palace (1 704-07). He died in Vienna
in 1709. and his work was to have a widespread influence on
Austrian architects and decorators.
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Pozzo’s ceiling-fresco in S. Ignazio was the culmination of a
long development in the decoration of Roman church interiors.
In the late sixteenth century some churches were left — and were
probably meant to be left — with almost no decoration beyond
bands of stucco ornament on the ribs of the vault. The Gesu
was originally entirely without frescoes and, though the in-
tentions of the Jesuits are not exactly recorded in this case. such
simplicity would have been entirely in keeping with their
severity in the early years of the company’s existence. Where
frescoes were commissioned, they were usually confined to
small fields within stucco frames. though exceptions occur. for
instance in the apse of S. Spirito in Sassia, where a large fresco
by Jacopo Zucchi, representing Pentecost. fills the whole apse.
or in S. Silvestro al Quirinale, where the Alberti family executed
a complete series of guadratura or false architectural per-
spective frescoes on the vault of the choir.°°
This type of illusionism had been more extensively used in
secular buildings, and the most ingenious devices of deception
and the confusion of real and painted spaces had been invented
by artists such as Salviati in the salone of the Palazzo Farnese or
Vasari in the Sala dei Cento Giorni in the Cancelleria.
In the ceiling of the gallery of the Palazzo Farnese Carracci
67
and his pupils created a new kind of illusionist effect. based on
an appearance of logic and avoiding the deliberately puzzling
and ambiguous effects created by Salviati and his followers.
The skeleton of the design 1s composed of feigned stucco herms
and atlantes supporting an imaginary entablature against
which stand pictures in gilt frames. while the centre of the vault
is covered by further paintings supposedly carried on the fictive
entablature. In the corners of the ceiling the eye 1s allowed to
pass through to the sky over balustrades on which stand putt.
Some of the followers of the Carracci rejected the illusionism
implicit in the Galleria Farnese, and when in 1613 Guido Reni
came to paint the Avrora on the ceiling of a room in the Casino
attached to the palace of Scipione Borghese. now the Palazzo
Rospigliosi. he deliberately executed it as a quadro riportato,
that 1s to say, like an easel painting inserted in a stucco frame in
the ceiling. without any attempt at illusion, and Domenichino
used the same method in his frescoes in the vault of the choir in
S. Andrea della Valle. though there the effect 1s more complex,
as the decoration involves a series of scenes. not a single
composition.
Generally speaking. however. quadratura painting gained in
popularity during this period. and in 1621—23 Guercino created
his most revolutionary piece of illustonism in the Aurora on
the ceiling of a room in the Casino Ludovisi. where the whole
ceiling is replaced by an illusionist rendering of architecture.
landscape, figures and sky. In church decoration the crucial step
was taken by Giovanni Lanfranco in the dome of S. Andrea
della Valle. in which he revived the complete illusionism
employed by Correggio in his two domes in the cathedral and
the church of S. Giovanni at Parma — an invention that had not
been followed up in the sixteenth century and was a complete
novelty in Rome.
Even bolder. however. was Cortona’s ceiling in the sa/one of
the Palazzo Barberini (1633-39). Basically the principle of the
illusion is the same as in the Galleria Farnese. but the effect 1s
much bolder because the centre of the space created by the
imaginary entablature is supposed to be opened out and the eye
passes through to the sky, in which float innumerable figures
grouped round the three bees of the Barberini arms and
forming a vast and complicated allegory — devised by the
Barberini court poet. Francesco Bracciolini — in honour of
Urban as pope. symbo! of the church triumphant and the
instrument of Divine Providence. This central composition is
surrounded by four other scenes in the cove of the ceiling, the
figures of which burst out beyond the limits of their frames and
spread over the imaginary entablature. almost joining the
actors in the central scene. Never was the Baroque love of
illusionism and allegorical adulation combined in a more
striking and yet convincing whole.
Cortona’s later decorations are less spectacular but no less
successful. In 1640 he was called to Florence to decorate the
ceilings of five rooms in the Palazzo Pitti. Here he evolved a new
type of decorative scheme. which combined illusionist paint-
67 Opposite Palazzo Barberini, Rome, frescoed ceiling of the salone by
Pietro da Cortona, 1633-39
68 Top right The Gesu, Rome, vault of the nave with decoration by
Baciccio, 1674-79
69 Right Gesu e Maria, Rome. by Carlo Rainaldi, interior. begun before
1675, with tombs of the Bologneiti family
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70 Top S. Marcello, Rome, facade, built by Carlo Fontana, 1682-83
71 Above The Port of the Ripetta, Rome; engraving showing sleps by
Atessandro Specchi, 1704; above them, the facade of S. Girolamo degli
Schiavoni by Martino Longhi the Elder, 1588-90; to Ihe right, the end of
the Palazzo Borghese with the loggia added in 1612-14
ings with stucco, including life-size Ngures in the round, a
scheme which was to be imitated in France by Charles Le Brun
in the Galerie d’ Apollon of the Louvre and the Grand Apparte-
ment at Versailles. From Florence Cortona went for a short
time to Venice, and this visit had an influence on his last
ecclesiastical decorative work in Rome, the vault of the Chiesa
Nuova (1663-64), of which he had earlier frescoed the dome
and apse in a convention based on Lanfranco’s dome at S.
Andrea della Valle, which had become the accepted idiom for
the decoration of Roman churches. In the nave, however, he set
the fresco in a massive architectural frame, carried by stucco
angels which stand against heavy coffering — composed of
hexagons and lozenges — which emulates the richness of the
carved and gilt wooden ceilings which he had seen in Venice.
The ceiling decoration also includes another innovation. Up to
this time frescoes on the vaults of churches had been confined to
a single bay and had been separated by the nbs of the vault. In
this case the fresco covers three out of five bays of the nave, and
the ribs of the vault disappear behind it.
In the decoration of the nave vault of the Gesu, executed a
decade later (1674-79) by Giovanni Battista Gaull, called
Baciccio (1639-1709), the artist combined the methods used by
Cortona in the Chiesa Nuova and the Palazzo Barberini ceiling,
covering the whole nave with a single fresco framed in stucco,
but allowing the figures in the painting to burst out over the
frame. This device is particularly effective in dramatizing the
theme of the fresco, which is the Glorification of the Name of
Jesus, before which vices and heresies flee, tumbling almost
literally into the church below.
In the ceiling of S. lgnazio Pozzo dispenses with stucco and
covers the whole enormous vault with fresco. It is the boldest
and grandest example of guadratura, combined with Cortona’s
daring arrangement of figures plunging over the fictive archi-
tecture. The effect is breath-taking, provided one stands exactly
at the right point in the church, which is indicated by a marble
plaque in the pavement. One of the disadvantages of this type of
illusionist fresco is that from all other points 1t makes nonsense!
While this exuberant tradition of fresco and stucco de-
coration was developing, architects were also exploiting the
possibilities of marble revetment for chapels and even whole
churches. Bernini had indicated the possibilities of the material
in the Cappella Cornaro and in S. Andrea al Quirinale, and
other architects rapidly followed his lead, and produced even
richer effects of marbling. For instance, the decoration of the
choir of S. Caterina da Siena (a Magnanapolhi), which was
mainly executed before 1667, has a rich surface of red marble
broken by high reliefs in white marble by Melchiorre Caffa, and
the whole interior of the Gesu e Maria was converted by Carlo
Rainaldi into a marble mausoleum for the Bolognetti family
(before 1675). A much more restrained and Classical style of
marbling was employed in the Cappella Spada in the Chiesa
Nuova, and the Cappella Cibo in S. Maria del Popolo, both by
Carlo Fontana (1634-1714), the leader of the group opposed to
the extremes of Late Baroque represented by the architects
discussed above.7*
Fontana was an architect of a type very different from the
masters of the High Roman Baroque. He was trained in the
studio of Bernini, whose building works he supervised for many
years, but he did not inherit any of his master’s imaginative
power. Of his few executed works the most important was the
facade of the church of S. Marcello (1682-83), which was to be a
model followed by architects all over Europe and was far more
i166
68
69
70
71
popular than any of those built by Borromini, Bernini, or
Cortona. The facade is concave. but it is based on a continuous
curve, much less nch than Borromini's facade of S. Carlino, but
more widely acceptable because of its simplicity. The surfaces
are clearly defined and there is no counterpoint or subtle
breaking up of masses. It was in fact exactly what was needed by
a public sated with the imaginative splendour of the architects
of the previous generation, and it established Fontana as a safe
man, who knew how to adapt his style to his clients. Within a
few years of Bernini's death he had established what was to be
for a generation the most sought-after studio in Rome, from
which designs and advice were sent out to all parts of
Europe. The efficient organization of his studio is attested by
the drawings which survive, mainly in the Royal Library at
Windsor Castle, which cover all aspects of his architectural
activities. from fortifications to drainage in civil architecture,
and from the design for a candlestick to one for a grand church
in the ecclesiastical field.
In the first half of the eighteenth century there were sull
marked differences between various groups of architects, but
there was more gradation of views.*>
Curiously enough one of Fontana’s pupils, Alessandro Spec-
chi (1668-1729), was among those who carried on the Baroque
tradition most boldly, and his steps on the Ripetta (1704). the
port on the Tiber in front of the church of S. Girolamo degli
Schiavoni, destroyed in the Jate nineteenth century but known
from engravings. were among the freest and most imaginative
inventions of the period, akin in their double-S curves to the
Staircases of Buontalenti in Florence or Guarini in Piedmont.
Specchi also produced a project for the Spanish Steps, but his
72 Below S. Maria Maddalena, Rome. niche on the facade attributed to
Giuseppe Sardi
73 Right The Spamsh Steps, Rome, by Francesco de Sanctis, 1723-25,
Above them, the facade of the Trinita dei Monu, late 16th century
74 Below right Piazza di S. Ignazio, Rome, by Filippo Raguzzini, 1727-28
Rome 59
design was rejected in favour of one by Francesco de Sanctis 73
(1693-1740; the steps were executed in 1723-25), which. though
one of the most popular sights in Rome, is much more loosely
designed than Specchi's Ripetta~ or for that matter than the
staircases of Guarini before him or the Neapolitan Ferdinando
Sanfelice in his own time (cf. below, pp. 88-89).
There was in fact an infusion of southern blood into Roman
architecture at this period. Filippo Juvarra, who spent some
years in Rome before settling in Turin, was a Sicilian. as also
was Filippo Raguzzini (active 1727-71), who built the in-
geniously curved facades of S. Maria della Quercia and S.
Gallicano, but 1s principally remembered for the lively piazza
in front of S. Ignazio (1727-28), with the curved houses and 74
diagonal streets. almost like a stage-set. Gabriele Valvassor1
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75 Above Palazzo della Consulta, Rome, by Ferdinando Fuga, facade,
1732-33
76 Opposite Fontana di Trevi, Rome, by Nicota Satvi, 1732-45
(1683-1761), a Roman by birth, was less inventive in planning
than Raguzzini, but in his fagade of the Palazzo Donia-
Pamphili facing the Corso (1731-34) the windows have hoods
of a Borrominesque type, and the four galleries which he
constructed over the loggie of the court, decorated with frescoes
by Aureliano Milani, are even richer variations of the Galleria
Colonna. They are in fact one of the last examples of that
combination of painting, stucco and gilding — to which in this
case are added mirrors — typical of late-Roman Baroque
architecture. Even more fantastic than Valvassori’s windows
are the niche-heads on the facade of S. Maria Maddalena
(1733), generally but uncertainly ascribed to Giuseppe Sardi
(1680-1753), in which the free adaptation of Borrominesque
forms is combined with the use of inverted half-pediments, a
device invented by Buontalenti but used later by Bernini in the
Cappella della Preta in St Peter's. Equally free and ingenious are
the stucco fountains and doors in the court and vestibule of the
Palazzo de] Grillo, by a hitherto unidentified architect.
The buildings of Raguzzini, Valvasson and Sardi have often
been described as Rococo, but they have nothing in common
with true Rococo. The term barocchetto has recently been
invented for them, and there is much to be said for it, since it
imphes that they belong to the Baroque, but the diminutive
suggests the rather hght and gay quality which distinguishes
them from Roman architecture of the seventeenth century.
Between the barocchetto and the consciously anti-Baroque
school of Galilei stand three ‘middle of the way’ architects who
have been little studied: Carlo de Dominicis (active 1721—40),
Domenico Gregorim (c. 1700-77) and Pietro Passalacqua (d.
1748). The first is responsible for the oval church of SS. Celso e
Giuliano (1733-36), and the two latter remodelled the basilica
of S. Croce in Gerusalemme (1744), to which they added an
oval vestibule, enclosed in an unusual curved facade. Passalac-
qua also built the small oratory of the Annunziata, near the
hospital of S. Spirito in Sassia, and Gregorini that of S. Maria
in Via. These architects employ the oval plan which had become
accepted since the mid-seventeenth century, but they do so ina
timid way, without any of the boldness of Borromini. Their
decorative vocabulary 1s also lacking in vitality compared with
Valvassori. They do not actually imitate Carlo Fontana, but
their architecture has a cautiousness which brings them very
close to him in spirit.
With the election of the Florentine Cardinal Lorenzo Corsini
as Pope Clement XII in 1730 official taste in Rome moved
sharply towards Classicism. The period was dominated by the
two Florentine architects whom Clement called to Rome:
Alessandro Galiler (1691-1736), and Ferdinando Fuga
(1699-1781), to whom must be added the Roman Nicola Salvi,
author of the Fontana di Trevi (1697-1751).
The most important event of the pontificate was the compet-
ition for the fagade of S. Giovanni in Laterano, opened by
Clement in 1732. Borromini had made designs for this, but they
had not been carried out, and the first church in Christendom
remained without a fagade of any sort. All the architects in
Rome sent in designs, which ranged from the Baroque fantasies
of Pozzo and Raguzzini to the subdued grandeur of Galilei’s
project. It was typical of Clement's taste that Galiler’s design
was chosen, but it can be argued that it was the only one of those
submitted which showed a real sense of the monumentality
needed in a facade on such a vast scale, which was to be seen at a
distance by those entering Rome along the Via Appia, across
the open space which lay to the east of the church. The fagade
contains echoes of Michelangelo’s Capitoline palaces and of
Bernini's unexecuted design for the front of St Peter's, but it has
many personal and original elements, such as the central
crowning feature and the introduction of pairs of columns and
pilasters to emphasize the main breaks in the fagade. It 1s one of
the great monuments of Classical taste of early eighteenth-
century Rome, but it is still within the Baroque idiom in its
scale, in the use of the giant Order, and in the large statues
which crown it and stand out against the sky, like those of
Bernim on the colonnade of St Peter's.
Galilei was also commissioned to add a facade to his national
church, S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini (1734). Here he adopted the
traditional Roman facade, but the unusual width of the church
enabled him to introduce a strong emphasis on the horizontal,
which is heightened by the almost unbroken line of the entab-
lature and the repetition of paired columns. The contrast
between this classicized front and that of, say, SS. Vincenzo e
Anastasio is too obvious to need underlining.
The third work built by Galilei for Clement was his family
chapel in S. Giovanni in Laterano (1732-35). This is the
architect’s most explicitly Classical work. In plan it 1s square,
with arms that are hardly more than shallow straight-ended
niches, The floor is composed of radiating sections, and the
vaults are decorated with severe hexagonal coffering. It is
symptomatic of Clement's taste that he took for the principal
feature of his own tomb in the chapel a famous porphyry
sarcophagus and four ancient columns, also of porphyry, which
had stood for centuries in the portico of the Pantheon.
Fuga remained closer to the true Baroque than Galilei.7° His
two principal palace fagades, the Consulta (1732-33) and the
Cenci-Bolognetti, opposite the Gesu, are both variants on
Bernini's Palazzo Chigi, but with the emphasis on the central
section removed in favour of a more regular — and more
76
77
75
36
62 PartlI Italy
monotonous — repetition of units. In both palaces the side
sections are of the same height as the central bay; the pilasters
of this section are repeated at the ends of the facade and are
echoed in the pilaster-bands which articulate the intervening
sections of the front. Further, in the Consulta the architect has
inserted a large mezzanine over the ground floor, which makes
the two storeys of almost equal height, and has emphasized this
feature by articulating the lower storey as well as the upper with
puasters. This ‘regularized’ variant of Bernini's design was to be
much more widely imitated than the original. In the courtyard
of the Consulta Fuga inserted a staircase with the flights rising
towards the centre. a sort of inversion of a type which he may
have seen in the palaces of Ferdinando Sanfelice when he visited — 121
Naples shortly before 1727 (cf. below, p.88). In the Palazzo
Corsini, which he built for Clement XII round the nucleus of a
palace which had belonged to Queen Christina of Sweden, he
created a staircase on a much grander scale, approached by a
three-aisled entrance leading to an octagonal vestibule, the
staircase itself occupying a block between two courts from
which it receives light on both sides. The conception is splen-
didly Baroque, but the dryness of the mouldings and the
decorative detail betray the influence of the increasingly Classi-
cal taste of the period.
Fuga’s earliest Roman church, S. Maria dell!’ Orazione e della
Morte (1732-37), is a competent exercise in the same idiom as
de Dominict’s SS. Celso e Giuliano. In the later church of S.
Apollinare (1745-48) he returned to a much more conventional
plan —a single nave with side-chapels and a dome over the choir
— and the same dry decorative detail which he used at the
Palazzo Corsini.
His most important — and his most difficult— commission was
the construction of the facade of S. Maria Maggiore, one of the
oldest and most venerated of the Roman basilicas. Basically
Fuga used the traditional Roman church fagade, with the upper
storey narrower than the lower, but he adapted the design to
suit the particular conditions with which he was faced. The
church was unusually wide, with five doors, a fact which led — 78
Fuga to make his fagade of five and three bays, instead of the
usual arrangement with three bays below and one above. This
increase in width of the facade helped Fuga to solve another of
the problems with which he was faced, namely the fact that the
facade of the church was not free-standing, but was enclosed
= between two high wings containing the College of Canons
= este SE : attached to the church, which would have crushed a fagade of
the normal Roman type. A further problem which faced the
architect was that, as at St Peter’s, the facade had to include a
benediction loggia and a vestibule for pilgrims. This gave him
the opportunity of opening up the structure, and this he did
with the utmost ingenuity, choosing his elements carefully, so as
to produce the greatest effect of variety in building up the
triangular design of the facade. On the lower storey the open-
ings are all flat-headed, with a segmental pediment over the
central] bay and straight pediments over the two outer bays. The
upper storey has arched openings, which echo the curve of the
central pediment of the lower storey, while the pediment of the
middle bay picks up those of the side bays to right and left of the
77 Above left S. Giovanni in Laterano, Rome, fagade, by Alessandro
Galilei, 1733-36
78 Left S. Maria Maggiore, Rome, fagade, by Ferdinando Fuga, 1741-43
ry)
76
79
lower storey. The crowning feature and the statues on the
balustrade echo — somewhat feebly - those on Galilei’s fagade
of the Lateran.
In 1751 Fuga was called to Naples by Charles 111, together
with Luigi Vanvitelli, whose one tmportant work in Rome had
been the restoration of S. Maria degli Angeli, the church which
Michelangelo had created for Pius IV in the ruins of the Baths
of Diocletian. Their works in Naples will be discussed below, in
the chapter dealing with Southern Italy.
The most famous monument of Late Baroque architecture in
Rome is the Fontana di Trevi, finally realized by Nicola Salvi in
the years 1732-45. after more than a century of abortive
attempts to give monumental form to one of the most impor-
tant sources of water supply in Rome.’’ The structure 1s the
largest and most ambitious of all Roman fountains, with a
grand facade covering the palace behind the fountain, including
as its central feature a niche set in a sort of triumphal arch. This
niche frames a statue of Neptune guiding a team of sea-horses
and tritons which charge over a zone composed of architectur-
ally formed fountains dissolving into rocks carved into natural-
istic foltage. Trevi was the last and most ebullient expression of
the Romans’ love of fountains, which was an expression of the
vital part which the supply of water played in the very existence
of the city; but up to this time Roman fountains had been more
modest in scale and more architectural in conception. Artificial
rocks had been used in the fountains which decorated the villas
of Frascati and Tivoli, but they had been stylized. It was an
innovation to use rocks in a fountain which stood 1n the middle
of the city. and an even bolder one to make the rocks so
naturalistic that they almost looked as though they had been
brought down from the Apennines. The idea was to catch on,
and Salvi is indirectly responsible not only for the fountains of
Caserta and the new settings given to those of Versailles by
Hubert Robert for Louis XVI, but for all those which sprawl
across the squares of modern capitals. not only in Europe but in
North and South America and many other parts of the world.
The Baroque died in Rome under the impulse of the Classical
revival inaugurated by the circle of artists round Cardinal
Alessandro Albani. Paradoxically. however. the architect
whom the Cardinal chose to build the villa to contain his
collectton of ancient works of art was Carlo Marchionni
(1702-86). a feeble representative of the late phase of Roman
Baroque architecture, and it is only in the decoration of the
interior and in the various pavilions in the garden that the new
Classical taste appears. But before the Classical revival took
complete hold of Roman architecture one great masterpiece
was created: Giovanni Battista Piranesi s chapel for the Priory
of the Knights of Malta on the Aventine. This chapel defies
classification. It is composed of elements taken from ancient
art — both Roman and Etruscan — transmuted by a feverish
imagination into a picturesque whole which has no parallel in
earliem architecture??
Rome was the artistic centre of Italy and indeed of the world
during the Baroque period, but as what we nowadays call ‘Italy’
was a conglomeration of separate states jealous of their
independence and proud of their own traditions, political and
artistic, it Is NOt surprising to find that Baroque art developed
different characteristics in different areas. In some centres, such
as Turin, the style was directly and powerfully influenced by
Rome, but in Venice, whose architects had always shown great
independence, there was little contact with Rome, and in
Rome 63
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79 S. Marta del Prioralo, Rome, by Piranesi, facade, begun 1764
Apulia and Sicily the discoveries of Roman architects were
hardly taken into account till well into the eighteenth century
and then only in one or two of the larger cities. The following
sections will be devoted to studying the local varieties of
architecture during the period and to examining how far they
can properly be described as Baroque.
64 Part! Italy
Northern Italy
Piedmont
While Rome was passing through this uninventive phase
in the last decade of the seventeenth century and the first part
of the eighteenth century a remarkable architectural movement
was growing up in Turin. The opportunity for the creation of
this school was provided by the ambitions of the house of
Savoy, which between the middle of the sixteenth and the
middle of the eighteenth centuries grew from a minor duchy
into the most powerful state in Northern Italy and a force in
European politics.’
After the peace of Cateau-Cambresis in 1559, which restored
to Savoy the territories she had been forced to cede to France,
the duke, Emmanuel Philibert, abandoned the old capital of
Chambéry and made Turin his centre of government. By a
mixture of adroit diplomacy and some fighting he and his
successors strengthened the position of Savoy in Italy to the
extent that in the early eighteenth century the house of Savoy
rose to royal estate, first for a short time as kings of Sicily (from
1712 to 1720), and then from 1720 onwards as kings of
Sardinia.
Naturally the heads of the house of Savoy felt the need to
make Turin a capital worthy of their new power and in fact
during the two centuries in question they planned and carried
out one of the most impressive schemes of urban development
produced in the Baroque era.
The scheme began modestly. In 1577 Pellegrino Tibaldi, who
had built the church of S. Fedele in Milan (begun 1569), was
called to Turin to design the church of SS. Martiri, dedicated to
the patron saints of the city, but a much more important phase
was opened in 1584, when the Umbrian Ascanio Vittozz1i
(c.1539-1615) was offered the post of official architect to the
duke, Charles Emmanuel, and began the systematic layout of
the city. He preserved the grid-plan which had survived since
Roman times, but along the old streets he built palaces on a
regular pattern, over porticoes, imitating the arrangement
known in many North Italian towns, such as Bologna. In
addition he laid out the large Piazza Castello, designed on the
same pattern, round the mediaeval castle of the Savoys, later
known as the Palazzo Madama. The scheme was extended in
the early seventeenth century by Carlo di Castellamonte, who
built the Piazza S. Carlo, south of the Piazza Castello, with twin
churches flanking the opening at the south end of the square.
This arrangement immediately brings to mind the two churches
on the Piazza del Popolo in Rome, but in fact the Piedmontese
example is earlier than the Roman, since the two churches were
built in 1619 and 1639 respectively, though their fagades were
not added till much later. Vittozzi and his immediate successors
established a scheme for the building of Turin which has been
followed ever since, and even the additions of the 1930s and the
reconstructions after the Second World War conformed to It.
Vittozzi was also an architect of some inventive power in the
designing of churches. The Santuario di Vicoforte near Mon-
dovi is a bold oval structure of such large scale that the dome
was not built till the mid-eighteenth century. The SS. Trinita in
Turin (begun in 1598) was of an ingenious tri-lobed plan
appropriate to its dedication.
During the first half of the seventeenth century Savoy was
involved in internal dissensions and unsuccessful foreign wars,
but peace and order were re-established by Charles Emmanuel
I] (1638-75), and it was during his reign that the most brillant
phase of Turinese architecture began with the arrival of Guar-
ino Guarini (1624-83), one of the most inventive architects of
the period and the only one who really understood the true
novelties of Borromini’s work and was able to develop them
into an original style of his own.?
Guarini was born in Modena and at the age of fifteen
entered the Theatine order. He was trained in theology, phil-
osophy and mathematics, and his writings on these subjects fill
many folio volumes. It is not known exactly how or when he
became interested in architecture, but it 1s clear that during his
training in the Theatine house in Rome from 1639 to 1647 he
must have studied the work of Borromini. In 1647 he was
transferred to Modena, but in 1660 he moved to Messina,
where he supplied designs for the church of the Padri Somaschi
and the facade of the Theatine church of SS. Annunziata. On
his journey south probably he would have passed through Rome
and so would have had the opportunity of seeing Borromini’s
works of the 1650s. In 1662 he was sent to Paris to design the
Theatine church there, called Sainte Anne-la-Royale. None of
these early buildings survives: of the churches in Messina, that
of the Padri Somaschi was never erected and the SS. Annunziata
was destroyed in the earthquake of 1909, and of Sainte Anne-la-
Royale only a small part was built and that was destroyed in the
nineteenth century. Fortunately, however, the designs of all of
them are preserved in the engravings in Guarini’s Architettura
Civile published in 1686 and again, in enlarged form, by his
pupil Bernardo Vittone in 1737. He made designs for two other
churches for towns outside Italy, S. Maria Oettingen in Prague,
and the Divina Provvidenza in Lisbon, both of which are
recorded in engravings, but it is not known whether the
churches were actually built or whether he visited the cities in
question. In 1666 Guarini was transferred to Turin, where he
spent the remainder of his life and built the only two ecclesiasti-
cal works which survive, the Theatine church of S. Lorenzo and
the Cappella della SS. Sindone, attached to the Cathedral.
If we examine the designs of his churches, whether in the
actual buildings or the engravings, certain features appear
which are common to all of them: first and foremost a love of
complex ground plans and a new type of dome structure. In the
plans Guarini was evidently inspired by the works of Borromini
which he saw in Rome, but he developed the possibilities of
complex designs much more fully than his predecessor. His
plans are sometimes circular, sometimes polygonal with 6, 8, or
10 sides. In other cases they are based on more traditional forms
80 Lisbon, S. Maria della Provvidenza (destroyed), plan by Guarino
Guarini, from an engraving
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a Greek or Latin cross — but Guarini never fails to introduce
some variations into the scheme: the bays will be octagonal or
oval, or they will overlap, so that one flows into another. Hts
dome structures can be most conveniently discussed in con-
nection with his two surviving churches, but even in some of the
earliest — Sainte Anne-la-Royale and the Padri Somaschi — he
already made ingenious use of his method of replacing the solid
cupola by interlocking ribs. This enabled him to build up his
churches to a great height and with changing shapes for each
unit. In Sainte Anne. for instance, the stages of the dome read
circular — hexagonal — circular. creating a structure that exter-
nally ts almost like a pagoda.
Guarini also invented new forms for individual architectural
features. For instance, he seems to have invented the kidney-
shaped window, and in Sainte Anne-la-Royale he introduced a
doubled Serliana. the bottom of which has the same form as the
top. but inverted. so that the window is symmetrical about the
horizontal as well as on the vertical axis. In the Divina Prov-
videnza for Lisbon, which is composed of interlocking oval
spaces forming a sort of Latin cross, the nave walls are
articulated with Salomonic pilasters. This particularly curious
device does not seem to have been repeated either by Guarini or
his successors. but the kidney-shaped window enjoyed a great
Northern Italy
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83 Below S. Lorenzo by Guarino Guarini, interior
65
83
66 Part I Italy
success with the Central European architects of the eighteenth
century, who produced many ingenious variations on it.
Fortunately Guarini’s most important ecclesiastical build-
ings in Turin have survived — though S. Lorenzo lacks its fagade
— and they give a very complete idea of his skill and originality.
S. Lorenzo was built between 1668 and 1680. Its plan ts
basically an octagon, to which is added a small oval choir with
its short axis leading to the altar; but within this simple scheme
Guarini has contrived an almost incredible number of varia-
tions. All the sides of the octagonal centre space are slightly
convex inwards and all, except the entrance bay, have Serlian
arches, leading to the choir ‘transept’, and to the chapels on the
diagonal axes, which are of unusual shape, being enclosed
between two arcs of circles. Above this lower arcaded zone is
another, much simpler, composed of alternating arches and
broad pendentives which support the dome. The Serlian theme
is continued into this zone in the form of windows in the
lunettes between the pendentives. Above this intermediate zone
rises the dome, composed, as in Guarini’s earlier churches, of
ribs crossing each other so as to form the network visible in
plate 10. and leaving an octagonal space in the centre. On this
octagon is erected a lantern which is covered by a small dome,
also constructed of ribs. There are pentagonal openings in the
solid part of the main dome, above the oval windows which
light it. As a result of these windows, the Serlian windows below
them and the rectangular openings in the lantern, the whole
upper part of the church is flooded with light, in contrast to the
tower zone, which only receives light from small windows in the
vaults of the chapels and the choir. The choir itself 1s oval in
plan, but its vaulting conceals this fact because it consists of a
circular ribbed dome, like the main dome in small but with six
instead of eight points, the end section being vaulted with ribs
touching this dome. Beyond the choir and separated from it by
yet another Serlian arch is a further oval space containing the
high altar.
The effect of varied movement in the lower zone 1s of extreme
subtlety. The bays on the cross-axis are on a simple convex
curve, but the altars which stand in them — and seem to grow out
of them — are more complex. Their outer sections consist of
narrow bays composed of a solid wall, curved and projecting
almost at right angles to the wall; these are followed by free-
standing columns, the entablatures above which make the
beginnings of a concave curve. This, however, is not continued
and the middle of the altar is composed of a shallow niche
covered by an arch in a single plane. This niche ts articulated
with pilasters, in front of which are free-standing, life-size
statues representing the Madonna del Carmine and S. Gaetano
of Thiene. This ingenious mixture of curved and flat planes
suggests that Guarini had seen and understood Borromini’s
tombs in the Lateran or in S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, and he
adopts from them some of the Michelangelesque ideas which
they incorporated.
A further subtle difference is introduced between the bays on
the main axes and those on the diagonals. Both sets are convex
but, whereas the bays on the main axes have a steady, slow
curve, those on the diagonals spring from the walls in sharp
curves, almost orthogonal to the walls themselves, which are
abruptly interrupted by a straight section in the middle.
In addition the side element of the Serliana—composed of a
flat trabeation joining a pilaster to a column — is repeated in the
side walls of the chapels on the corners of the octagon of which
the plan of the church is composed.
The exterior of S. Lorenzo cannot be fairly judged in the
absence of the facade, but the dome stands up in a series of
concave bays in two tiers, topped by the small cupola of the
lantern, providing a pagoda-like structure much imitated by
Guarini’s followers in Piedmont.
Guarini’s other surviving work of ecclesiastical architecture,
the Cappella della SS. Sindone, was built to enshrine the Holy
Shroud, a relic which belonged to the house of Savoy and was
regarded by them with great veneration, in spite of the fact that
its authenticity had been officially denied by the Church in the
later Middle Ages.
The chapel was begun in 1657 by Amadeo di Castellamonte,
son of Carlo, but when Guarini was called in in 1668, he so
completely transformed the design that it can be considered as
essentially his invention. The placing of the chapel presented
problems, because, although it was to form part of the Cathe-
dral, it had also to communicate with the Royal Palace. The
solution was to set it to the east of the high altar and above the
level of the church, so that it should be at the height of the state
apartments on the first floor of the palace. Castellamonte chose
a circle for its basic plan, dividing it into three sections of 120°
each, which enabled him to place one door on the main axis of
the Cathedral leading to the palace, and two more openings
giving access to flights of steps running from the transepts,
parallel with the choir. Guarini was compelled to take over this
basic plan, as the walls had already risen to a considerable
height when he was put in charge of the building, and he
emphasized the tri-partite plan — possibly an allusion to the
Trinity — by establishing three vestibules for the three entrances.
The vestibule leading to the palace is cut off by a door, but the
full circles of the others are visible, joining the chapel to the
84 Left S. Lorenzo, interior of dome
85 Opposite Turin, Cathedral, interior of the dome of the Cappella della
SS. Sindone, begun by Amadeo de Castellamonte in 1657, completed by
Guarini between 1668 and 1690
68 PartI Italy
steps leading from the church itself. The circumferences of these
circles are divided into three parts, each consisting of an
opening flanked by two free-standing columns, the openings
leading to the chapel, to the steps, and to a sacristy. Between
these sections are columns which are linked above by ribs
forming an equilateral triangle on the dome, which, however, is
so low that it almost looks hike a flat ceiling.
The height and articulation of the lower zone of the chapel
had been established before Guarint’s arrival, since Castella-
monte had constructed an Order of Corinthian pilasters sup-
porting an entablature running right round the chapel, but
Guarini enriched this effect by inserting a smaller Order to carry
the galleries over the vestibules, and he continued the entab-
lature of this Order round the whole chapel, interrupting it by
arched niches between the pilasters of the main Order. Above
this zone the design is entirely Guarini’s. He gave a grander
scale to Castellamonte’s design by uniting the bays of the lower
zone in pairs, over which he constructed a sort of low pediment
composed of shell-forms reminiscent of Buontalenti’s decor-
ative motives, and over them a single arch rising up to the spring
of the dome and enclosing an upright oval window. Between
these arches are broad pendentives, not unlike those in
S. Lorenzo, but decorated, like the fields of the arches between
them, with a low-relief pattern of stars and hexagons.
Above this zone rises a tall drum, lit by large round-headed
windows which alternate with niches, and the design culminates
in a dome of extraordinary fantasy, peculiar even for Guarini.
This ts formed by a series of layers, each composed of flattened
arches, containing windows divided in the middle by a short
vertical strut. In the lowest layer the ends of the flattened arch
rest on the tops of the arched windows of the drum; in the next
layer they rest on the tops of the lowest arches, and this process
is repeated six times. At each stage the flat arches project further
into the central space, so that at the top they shrink to the size of
the ring supporting the Jantern, which in its turn is composed of
ribs lying in an almost horizontal plane, leaving triangular
openings ht from above by windows in the outer shell of the
Jantern. In this way — as at S. Lorenzo, but in a more com-
plicated manner — the whole dome is transfused with light, while
the lower part of the chapel is in relative darkness.
The use of material and the treatment of detail in the chapel
are superb. There is no colour, except for the gilded galleries,
and the whole chapel 1s constructed of grey marbles of varying
tones, very dark, in fact nearly black, in the bottom zone and
lighter in the cupola itself. The pattern of the floor, which is also
made of marbles of different greys, is based on panels of dark
grey marble radiating from the centre of the chapel. Half ofthese
run unbroken to the outer circumference of the chapel, but the
remainder are interrupted by further panels. the sides of which
are also on radu of the circle but are broken at the corners by
slight, almost rectangular, cut-out elements. Each panel has a
brass star inlaid in its centre, and the effect is almost of a series of
starred panels suspended on ribbons from the middle of the
chapel.
The floors of the vestibules are even more complex. In the
centre of each is a many-pointed sun enclosed 1n a circle, from
which rays extend outwards in alternately long and short
triangular groups. On the outer circumference of the circle are
little equilateral triangles in bronze and chevrons in the lighter
marble. These leave spaces which are basically diamond-
shaped, but Guarini was not content to leave them in their
simple forms, and he elongated them by cutting out a small
triangle at each end of their longer axis. In order to fit the
elongated shape of these diamond panels he gives the brass stars
with which they are inlaid an elongated form by extending the
rays on the long axis of the diamond. As a final piece of
sophistication the sun in the middle of the floor, which at first
sight one would guess to have sixteen points, in fact has fifteen,
five corresponding to each of the three sections into which the
vestibule is divided. The tri-partite scheme 1s carried on into the
minutest detail.
The flights of stairs leading from the transepts of the Cathed-
ral to the chapel are composed of steps curved in a form
deriving from Michelangelo’s steps in the Ricetto of the
Laurenziana in Florence, a form much imitated by his Flor-
entine followers, particularly Buontalenti. They are ap-
proached through two tall doors of black marble with orna-
ments in the style of the same architect. Externally the dome of
the chapel presents an exotic effect, since the low, ribbed
windows of the dome, topped by a tall thin spire, combine to
produce an almost Chinese effect — an impression probably not
consciously intended by the architect.
Guarini also built or enlarged several palaces for the duke of
Savoy and members of his family. He added a wing to the
country palace of Racconigi and began the Collegio dei Nobili,
which was left unfinished, but much his most remarkable work
in this field was the palace begun in 1679 for Emmanuel
Philibert, Prince of Carignano, the head ofa cudet branch of the
Savoys. This also was left unfinished and disastrously com-
pleted in the late nineteenth century, but the main wing facing
the piazza is as Guarini intended it. It ts a magnificently
mouvementé design, with straight wings separated by a deep
concavity which 1s interrupted by a strongly convex bay in the
middle. The play of curves is strengthened by the sharp hollow
of the half-domed niche over the main door, covered by a
pediment straight in elevation but curved in ground plan.
The contrast of concave and convex forms Is close in feeling
to Borromini, but the most exact parallel 1s with Bernint’s first —
and rejected — design for the Louvre, which Guarini must have
known from drawings, perhaps transmitted from Paris to the
court of Turin through the dowager duchess of Savoy, Madama
Reale, who was an aunt of Louis XIV. Guarini has, however,
modified Bernini's design in several important respects. Where-
as the latter conceived his facade as consisting of a single Order
standing on arusticated basement, Guarini gives equal import-
ance to the two storeys of his palace, each of which 1s articulated
with an Order, a sort of Tuscan below and Corinthian above.
But the character of the Palazzo Carignano depends essentially
on the fact that it is conceived and executed in brick, a material
widely used in Piedmont since ancient Roman times. Guarini
was evidently influenced by this local tradition, but his moulded
brick ornament derives more obviously from Borromini’s use
of the same material in the Oratory, S. Andrea delle Fratte or S.
Maria dei Sette Dolori. But even Borromini never conceived
any decoration in brick as bold as the broken double-curved
pediments over the windows or the ‘winged’ motifs repeated in
the ornament of the pilasters on the Palazzo Carignano.
During his lifetime Guarini published a treatise on fortific-
ation (1676) and one on the measurement of buildings (1674),
but his main treatise on architecture remained unpublished and
did not see the light till 1737 under the title Architettura Civile,
though the engravings of his principal churches had appeared
in 1686. It is interesting to note that the treatise 1s the only work
of the kind produced by an Italian Baroque architect.
It covers a vast range of subjects. but the most important
parts deal with the application of geometry to architecture.
from orthogonal projection to stereotomy or the cutting of
stones to fit complicated vaults. From the historical point of
view the most interesting fact about the treatise 1s that Guarini
puts up a vigorous defence of Gothic architecture. the prin-
ciples of which he analyses with considerable insight.
He begins by making the bold assertion that, as in all other
subjects. it was foolish to become a slave to the Ancients. and
that 1t 1s possible to correct their rules. in order to produce
buildings which will please ‘reasonable judgement and a jud-
iclous eye. and on this principle it is permissible to study the
architecture of the Middle Ages. He points out that the qualities
of Gothic architecture are exactly the opposite of those govern-
ing ancient Roman architecture: the latter aims at being and
appearing solid, the former at appearing frail but being in fact
very strong. In a passage too long to quote in full he praises the
boldness of their structure in building. ‘a tall steeple supported
stably on thin columns. Orders which bend outwards beyond
86 Turin. facade of the Palazzo Carignano by Guarino Guarini, begun
1679
Northern Italy 69
the feet [of the columns]. which hang in the air without any
column to support them’. and he goes on to talk about the
open-work towers and tall windows and their manner of
vaulting “which pleased manv
This reference to their vaulting helps to explain one impor-
tant fact about Guarini’s architecture. namely that his nbbed
domes are closely reminiscent of certain European works of the
Middle Ages. but even more exactly of a type of Islamic dome-
structure in Spain, for instance in the Mosque of Cordova and
one in Toledo, now the church of Cristo de la Luz. How he
could have known these works is uncertain. If he went to
Lisbon. he may have travelled through Spain and seen exam-
ples of the type, or he may have seen drawings of them brought
by other architects from Spain. perhaps at an earlier date.
because they were certainly known to Leonardo, who drew one
on a sheet of studies now at Windsor. Whatever the solution.
the connection is too precise to be accidental. As would be
expected. Guarini did not copy his models slavishly. because in
the examples in Spain which might have been known to him the
ribs stand against and support a solid dome: Guarini gave them
a new meaning by opening up the spaces between the ribs, so
that the hight can stream through them.
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When Guarini died in 1683 there were several competent
architects working in Turin, but the next three decades form a
period of relative inactivity. When, however, Victor Amadeus
II became king. first of Sicily (1712) and then of Sardinia (1720),
he needed an artist who worked in the grand manner to carry
out his projects. He was lucky in his choice of Filippo Juvarra
(1678-1736). a Sicilian whom he had met in Messina on his only
visit to the island as king in 1714.4 Juvarra had been trained in
Rome, mainly in the studio of Carlo Fontana, and he succeeded
his master in the role of adviser to those concerned with major
building projects all over Europe. In Italy he made designs for
palaces at Lucca, Mantua, Como, Bergamo, and other smaller
87 Turin, exterior of the Superga by Filippo Juvarra, 1717-3)
AEDs :
2
towns; he sent plans to the Landgraf of Hessen-Cassel; he spent
two years in Lisbon working for the king of Portugal, visiting
Paris and London on his return journey, and in 1735 he was
called to Spain to provide plans for the Royal Palaces.
His most important works, however, were built in or near
Turin for Victor Amadeus. In some of these his Roman training
is much in evidence as, for instance, in the facade of S. Cristina
(1715-28), which is an adaptation of Fontana’s S. Marcello.
Juvarra modified Fontana’s design in several ways: he simp-
lified the architectural forms by leaving out the pediment and
aedicule which tend to break up S. Marcello, and replaced them
by a lively group of figure sculpture, adding a row of flaming
candelabra as the sky-line.
The church of S. Filippo Neri was a much more important
undertaking. Juvarra was called in by the Oratonans in 1714.
when the church begun by Guarini and continued by Michele
Garovo had collapsed. Juvarra does not seem to have taken any
account of the earlier scheme. but created a completely new
church with a simple but spacious nave, side-chapels and a deep
choir. The design is in a sense an enlargement of Borromint’s
Roman Oratory, but its rounded corners, each broken by a
door. a niche and a window, one above the other. are more like
his Re Magi. For the walls over the side-chapels of the nave the
architect used a complicated variant of Guarini's kidney-
shaped windows. the only trace in the church of the influence of
Juvarra’s great predecessor.
Juvarra’s later church of the Carmine (1732-35) also consists
of a single nave. but it 1s much taller in proportion than S.
Filippo Neri, owing to the insertion of an attic between the
main entablature and the spring of the vault. The church
contains one great novelty: itis built in the form ofa wall-pillar
church. with the walls separating the chapels carried the full
height of the nave, allowing for high galleries over the chapels.
Further Juvarra has abandoned the entablature which in-
variably ran over the arches leading to the chapels in earlier
Italian churches and replaced it by sculptured groups. produc-
ing an effect reminiscent of a cut-out on a stage-set — and it must
be remembered that Juvarra had been active as a stage designer
during his years in Rome. Finally he pierced the vaults of the
chapels with openings through which light comes from the tall
windows above.
The wall-pillar churchis an essentially northern Late-Gothic
form (cf. below, p.222) and the Carmine 1s one of the very rare
examples of influence from countries north of the Alps on
Italian architecture of the post-Renaissance period. The pre-
sence of this Gothic element may at first sight suggest that
Juvarra was influenced by Gnarini’s enthustasm for mediaeval
architecture. but in fact his approach is enurely different: he
adopted a particular kind of Late-Gothic plan and he showed
no interest at all in the ribbing of Gothic vaults which intrigued
Guarini.
Juvarra’s reputation rests. however. on three major works in
or near Turin: the Superga. the Palazzo Madama. and the
palace at Stupinigi.
The Superga ts said. not very convincingly, to have been built
on the spot from which Victor Amadeus IT and Prince Eugene
of Savoy — who was in command of his army tn the campaign of
1706 against the French — surveyed the enemy's troops before
the victory which forced the French to raise the siege of Turin.
It was in any case begun in 1717, a few years after the duke had
Northern Italy 71
become king of Sicily. and it was certainly conceived as a
monument to the glory of the house of Savoy
It stands magnificently on a steep hill. more than 1300 feet
above the city. Baroque architects and patrons had an eve fora
site. and Juvarra designed his church to tell at a distance. He
adapted the model of S. Agnese in Piazza Navona to suit a free-
standing building, but itis worth noticing that the complex tops
to the towers are closer to Borromint's original design, known
from a drawing. than to the tamer verston actually built. These
towers are of u type frequently used at almost the same date in
South Germany and Austria. and this has led to a suggestion of
direct influence from the north, but it seems more likely that
both the Turinese and the northern architects based their
designs on the same Roman model.
88 Top left Turin. fagade of Ihe Palazzo Madama by Filippo Juvarra.
1718-2]
89 Above Palazzo Madama. staircase by Filippo Juvarra
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Seen from a distance the church produces a magnificent
effect. The dome stands up strongly, the portico seems boldly
designed, and the towers give proper support visually to the
central part of the building; but closer inspection reveals certain
weaknesses. The portico with its unusual proportions — it 1s
almost square in plan — seems too thin to form a base for the
cupola, and there is a lack of continuity between the portico, the
cylindrical wall which encloses the body of the church, and the
rectangular section which contains the transepts. The interior
also shows a certain indecision. The four arches of the main
openings are each in a single plane, but the walls and the arches
Jeading to the chapels on the diagonals are curved, while the
entablature which supports the drum of the dome forms a
continuous circle, thus creating an awkward relation between
the lower and upper sections of the church. We look in vain in
Juvarra’s churches for the careful use of material and the
attention to detail which characterized those of Guarini. Here
we find only stucco, competently but rather coarsely moulded
and not designed to cling to the form of the structure, as would
have been the case with Borromim or Guarini.
The Palazzo Madama consists of an irregular quadrilateral
block, dating mainly from the fourteenth century, which orig-
inally had four round towers at the corners. In ]718 Madama
Reale, the widow of Victor Amadeus I, commissioned Juvarra
1o plan a complete reconstruction of the castle. Of this scheme
only the wing containing the grand staircase was carried out,
and this was designed to be the central element in a much larger
facade of nineteen bays, with taller pavilions at the ends.
Compared with Guarinis Palazzo Carignano the Palazzo
Madama strikes a severe note. It is designed entirely in terms of
planes and straight lines. The facade is divided into three equal
parts of three bays each, articulated by a tall Corinthian Order,
which encloses the piano nobile and a mezzanine and stands on a
rusticated ground floor, as in Bernini's third Louvre design,
though the round-headed windows on the piano nobile and the
trophy-reliefs on the central piers have a slightly French
flavour. Juvarra has emphasized the central section by making
it break forward and giving it free-standing columns instead of
the pilasters which articulate the wings.
The staircase itself, which fills the whole of the pavilion, is of
a grandeur hitherto unknown in Italy and perhaps only excelled
by the Escalier des Ambassadeurs at Versailles. It may in fact
derive from France, because its plan with two symmetrical
flights, each doubling back on itself, seems to have been
invented by Louis Le Vau in one of his projects for the Louvre.
This was never carried out, but the design seems to have been
widely known outside France, presumably through copies after
the drawings. Carlo Fontana planned to use it in the Granary
which he built for Clement XI near the Baths of Diocletian, but
the project remained on the drawing-board and the first stair-
case of this type actually to be built appears to be Fischer von
Erlach’s at Klesheim for the Archbishop of Salzburg, which
was begun in 1700, though examples of half the plan, that is to
say, a single staircase doubling back under a barrel-vault
covering both flights, had been built in Italy, for instance by
Borrominit and Longhena.
Though the design of the staircase may derive from France,
the treatment of its individual features, such as the balustrade
and the stucco decoration of the walls and the vault, 1s com-
pletely Italian. The top landing is broken into a complex — and
curiously enough not quite symmetrical — series of curves; the
massive scrolls and masks at the half-landing twist slightly out
of the plane of the balustrade, as if to guide the visitor on his
way. In detail these piers and the stucco decoration generally
are Roman in feeling and recall the forms of Pietro da Cortona.
The Palazzo Madama is a typical example of the workings of
the Late International Baroque: a French plan, known in Rome
and Vienna, is treated in a manner which derives from Roman
Baroque; and on the exterior French elements in the windows
and the reliefs are worked into a whole which is directly inspired
by Bernini.
By contrast Stupinigi (begun 1729) seems entirely un-French,
Piedmontese and highly personal to Juvarra. It was nominally
conceived as a hunting lodge and is still called the Palazzina di
Caccia, but in its scale and its position, some six miles outside
the city, the parallel with Versailles is obvious; but only in
function, not in form. Stupinigi is laid out on a basis of wings
radiating from a central block, two of which are bent round, so
that they eventually form a hexagonal court with smaller
wings projecting from two of its corners. The idea of a building
oI
86
88
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176
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with radiating wings is almost certainly derived from an un-
executed plan for a villa by Carlo Fontana -— which seems also to
have been known to Fischer von Erlach — but the idea of
extending the wings to enclose a forecourt is Juvarra’s. This
arrangement creates a magnificent approach to the central
block. which is distinguished from the other sections by being
taller and curved both in plan and in roofline. This block
contains the great sa/one, a room unlike the festival halls usual
in Italian palaces. It isin many ways more like a church than a
ball-room. and in fact its design is very close indeed to some of
the projects for rebuilding the Cathedral of Turin which
Juvarra produced at about the same time. In plan it consists of
an octagonal central space. covered by a saucer-dome sup-
ported on four free-standing piers, round which are grouped
two larger and two smaller apses. Its height is unexpectedly
great in relation to the ground which it covers. This has the
practical advantage that it allows the architect to introduce
galleries for orchestras or spectators, but it increases the
church-like effect of the whole room. The lines of balconies,
pediments, and frames are broken into free Baroque curves.
and the ensemble is completed by frescoes which have a touch
of the Rococo in their light and gay colours, but which are
conceived in terms of heavy figures, still Baroque in feeling.
Juvarra’s conception of architecture was basically different
from that of Guarini and he seemed for a moment to have
eclipsed the latter. but Guarini’s ideas were taken up and
developed by his true successor, Bernardo Vittone (1702-70).°
Except for a few years of training in Rome, Vittone spent the
whole of his life in Piedmont. building churches for monasteries
or parishes all over the province, often in small and relatively
unimportant places. His studies in Rome no doubt gave him a
good conventional training in architecture, but much more
important for the formation of his style was the fact that he was
entrusted by the Theatines with the editing of Guarintrs treatise.
Vittone himself wrote two treatises of immense length, the
Istruzzioni elementari (1760) and the /struzzioni diverse (1766).
as well as a mass of notes which have never been fully studied.
Northern Italy
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93 Top right Sanctuary of Vallinotto, by Bernardo Vittone, 1738-39.
secuion and plan
94 Above Sanctuary of Vallinotto, interior of dome
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74 ~Part I Italy
His earliest documented work, the little Sanctuary standing
alone beside a farm at Vallinotto, near Carignano, which was
built in 1738-39, shows him already master of a highly sophis-
ticated architectural idiom. In plan the church is a hexagon with
six nearly semi-circular chapels, in three of which convex coretti
have been inserted at the level of the entablature. The bay
containing the altar is open and joined to a semi-circular retro-
choir by a sereen of columns reminiscent of Palladio. The
arrangement of the dome is of hitherto unknown complexity.
From the six main piers of the church spring ribs which form a
network like that in Guarini’s S. Lorenzo, but above this are
two frescoed shells, the lower without windows but with a wide
opening in the centre leading through to the outer shell, which is
lit by concealed windows and a small] lantern. This scheme is
based on the by now generally accepted idea of concealed
lighting, but no Roman architect had used it in this particular
form, and Vittone’s model was certainly J. H. Mansart’s church
of the Invalides, which he could have known through engrav-
ings. In the zone linking the church with the dome Vittone has
followed Juvarra’s lead at the Carmine and has eliminated the
straight entablature over the chapel arches. In a preliminary
design recorded in an engraving he followed Juvarra’s scheme
exactly, making arches support groups of sculpture standing
out against the space over the chapels, but in the executed
building he partly closed the zone over the arches, piercing it
with round-headed openings. He broke through the vaults of
the chapels, as Juvarra had done at the Carmine, and the
openings thus created, combined with those in the lower ribbed
dome, enable the spectator to look through from one space to
another — sometimes to the inner dome, sometimes to the outer,
or in the central opening to one superimposed on the other — 1n
a manner far more complex than occurs m any church by
Guarini.
Vittone’s basic architectural ideas are fully developed at
Vallinotto, and most of the later centralized churches only show
variations on them. S. Chiara at Bra, for instance, differs in that
the dome is constructed in the traditional manner with ribs
against a closed shell, but Vittone cuts trefoil openings in its
surface, which allow the spectator’s view to pass through to
figures of angels painted on the outer shell just behind the
openings. S. Chiara diflers from Vallinotto in being taller and in
having four chapels instead of six. In both these features it
comes close to Juvarra’s sa/one at Stupinigi, and so the church-
like salone may have been an influence on the designing of an
actual church. |
In one group of buildings — the chapel of the Albergo di
Carita at Carignano (1744) and the church of S. Maria in Piazza
in Turin (1751-54) — Vittone introduces another novelty by
inserting in the pendentives of the dome half-cylindrical hollow
bays which he continues up into the zone of the drum. This
ingenious device links the two zones together effectively, buit is
visually awkward.
The exteriors of Vittone’s churches are the exact expression
of their internal structure. Each zone is clearly visible, the result
being a pagoda-like structure, basically ke Guarini's S. Lo-
renzo; but Vittone follows the internal structure more closely
than his master, who at S. Lorenzo makes the interior and
exterior surfaces curve 1n opposite directions. With Vittone the
external bays follow the interna} exactly, all convex at Vallin-
otto or S. Chiara, all concave at Grignasco, where the exterior
has a firmness which reminds one that ultimately Vittone is the
spiritual heir to Borromini.
While Vittone was creating his fantastic structures for the
churches and monasteries of Piedmont, the art of the court of
Turin was developing in a quite different direction, towards a
Rococo which is closer to French decoration of the time than
anything else to be found in Italy. This is apparent in a series of
small rooms in the Palazzo Reale designed by Benedetto Alfieri
(1700-67), who succeeded Juvarra as official architect to the
king. These rooms are among the most delicate examples of an
art much favoured in the courts of Italy and to be found in the
royal or ducal palaces in many ftaltan towns. Only Rome set
her face firmly against this light-hearted style, and the suite of
rooms on the top floor of the Palazzo Barberini appears to
be an almost unique example of the style in the city.
Genoa, Lombardy and Emilia
In the other parts of North Italy the Baroque did not take root
and flourish as it did in Piedmont, but all the major towns from
Genoa to Venice produced individual works of interest.
Genoa had seen a great wave of expansion and building in the
second half of the sixteenth century.° The Strada Nuova, now
the Via Garibaldi, was laid out and flanked by a series of the
most splendid palaces to be found in any European city. The
most inventive architect of the period was Galeazzo Alessi
(1512-72), who created a type of palace and villa ideally suited
to the difficult sites of the city, which continued to be used fora
century and a half after his death. In the early seventeenth
century the tradition was carried on by Bartolomeo Bianco
(before 1590-1657), who in the University produced one of the
few purely Baroque buildings in Genoa. It owes much to the
Palazzo Doria-Tursi, now the Municipio, one of the most
advanced Genoese palaces of the sixteenth century, which was
built by two associates of Alessi - Domenico and Giovanni
Ponzello — and probably owes much to his inspiration. In the
Palazzo Doria-Tursi the architects had taken advantage bril-
liantly of the steeply sloping site on which the palaces of the
Strada Nuova are built to create a succession of spaces at
different levels, leading from the vestibule at street level to the
main arcaded court one stage higher, through a grand Imperial
staircase to the upper floors and to a garden at a higher level at
the back of the palace. Bianco followed this pattern, but
modified it by making the staircase carry on up to the terraced
third floor and by extending the loggia on the ground floor of
the main court round the vestibule, thus fusing the two prin-
cipal sections of the building into a single whole more com-
pletely than had been done in the earlier palace.
Genoese palaces of the later seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries are notable for the lavish decoration which they
received at the hands of a series of virtuoso quadratura fresco
painters, among whom the most important were Domenico
Piola and Lorenzo de Ferrari, who were responsible for the
decoration of the great rooms in the Palazzo Bianco (destroyed
during the Second World War), the Palazzo Rosso, the Palazzo
Carega-Cataldi, and many others. About 1780, however, that is
to say, at a time when the Baroque had been superseded by
some form of Classical revival in almost all parts of Italy,
Genoa produced one remarkable architect in the old style,
Gregorio Petondi, who laid out the Via Nuovissima, now called
the Via Cairoli, a worthy extension of the Strada Nuova, and
remodelled the Palazzo Balbi. The latter had been begun in the
sixteenth century on a site on the Via Cairoli, but was
extended by the acquisition of a site at the back facing on the
Via Lomellini, which ran at a lower level. Petondi seized upon
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this typically Genoese problem to create a brilliantly designed
double staircase, so that from the Via Cairoli the visitor can go
up, past a mezzanine floor, to the piano nobile, or down to the
apartments on the ground floor on Via Lomellini—an ingenious
variation on the disposition used by Hildebrandt in the Upper
Belvedere in Vienna of which Petondi no doubt knew the plans.
Lombardy, and particularly the area round Lake Como, had
produced a great line of architects and masons in the later
Middle Ages, which continued through the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries, but towards the end of the period the men of
real ability - Domenico Fontana, Carlo Maderno, and Borro-
mini— tended to leave their native towns and seek their fortunes
in Rome, and the two great reformers and builders, St Charles
Borromeo and his nephew, Cardinal Federico Borromeo, relied
mainly on architects imported from elsewhere, such as Pelleg-
rino Pellegrini Tibaldi from Bologna. The one great exception
was Francesco Maria Ricchino (1583-1658), who was born and
died in Milan and apparently never left Lombardy, except fora
short visit to Rome when he was sent by Cardinal Federico
Borromeo to complete his training, probably in the very first
years of the seventeenth century.’ The evidence of his surviving
works suggests that he studied the buildings of Vignola and his
successors, and that he probably saw the facade of S. Susanna,
but he also learnt much more from the architects of his native
95 Top left Genoa, the University by Bartolomeo Bianco. designed 1630,
the court
96 Left Genoa, the Universily, plan and section
97 Above Genoa, staircase in the Palazzo Balbi by Gregorio Pelondi, 1780
32]
98
76 ~=Part I Italy
city, particularly from his master Lorenzo Binago (1554-1628)
and from Tibaldi. He was deeply influenced by the ideas of his
patron Federico Borromeo, and his churches are the clearest
reflection of the Cardinal's ideals in ecclesiastical architecture.
In the church of S. Alessandro, Milan (begun 1601), Binago
had evolved an ingenious combination of centralized and
longitudinal planning by using a series of square spaces, each
covered by a dome, to form a Greek cross, but adding a square
choir and a semi-circular apse, which created an emphasis on
the long axis. In his earliest church, S. Giuseppe (1607-30),
Ricchino uses the same method ina very stmplhied form, and the
church consists essentially of a square domed nave followed by
a smaller choir of identical shape. To both elements are added
very shallow rectangular chapels, so that they become almost
Greek crosses. This method of designing was never taken up in
Rome, but it was used in the eighteenth century by Giovanni
Domenico Vaccaro in Naples, and by Johann Michael Fischer
in Bavaria, though it is difficult to say whether there 1s a direct
connection. In his plans for other churches Ricchino was more
adventurous and created ingenious combinations of squares
and Greek crosses, as well as experimenting with oval elements.
The exterior of S. Giuseppe is highly original, because
Ricchino has applied a typical Roman facade to the drum of the
octagonal dome over the nave of the church, one side of which
forms the central section of the facade itself. This combination
98 Right Milan, exterior of S. Giuseppe by Francesco Maria Ricchino,
1607-30
99 Below Milan, facade of the Collegio Elvetico by Francesco Mania
Ricchino, begun 1627
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of the two forms creates a new kind of variety in the relation of
the facade to the body of the church. The scheme may have
influenced Borromini. who would certainly have seen the
church in building during his early years in Milan.
Ricchino. who was employed on work at the cathedral of
Milan from 1603 onwards and was in charge of it from 1631 to
1638. produced many designs for the facade. Some of these are
composed of a combination of Tibaldesque motifs.® but one of
them, dating from 1606, has a movement forward in steps
emphasized by full columns. which shows that the architect had
learnt a lesson from Maderno, in particular from S. Susanna. In
the fagade which he added to the Collegio Elvetico (begun
1627). however. he made a much more revolutionary move and
designed the central part of the building on a concave curve — at
least seven vears before Borromini and Cortona applied the
same method to the facades of S. Carlino and SS. Luca e
Martina. It 1s difficult to decide whether or not they knew his
design. Borromini had left Milan by 1618, and Cortona never
visited the city: on the other hand it is quite possible that the
former had kept up a connection with Ricchino, who might
have sent a drawing to Rome.
Ricchino was also an accomplished designer of palaces. In
the Palazzo Annom he used a single repeated arch for the
loggias of the cortile. but in the Palazzo Durini (1648) and the
Brera he followed Tibaldi’s Collegio Borromeo at Pavia and
created a magnificent effect with a series of Serlian arches. He
actually worked at the Collegio Borromeo, which he extended
by adding at the back two wings with colonnades in the style
used earlier by Fulvio Mangone at the Collegio Elvetico, which
was ultimately inspired by Palladio.
One other monument built near Milan during Ricchino’s
lifetime must be mentioned. namely the Sacro Monte at Varese.
designed by Giuseppe Bernasconi (begun 1604). with fourteen
chapels, all different in design and showing an extraordinary
variety of circular, oval, square. and polygonal forms.
During the latter half of the seventeenth century little build-
ing was carried out in Milan. but in the first half of the
eighteenth century there was a revival which produced a
number of impressive, if not very original. palaces. The Roman-
born architect Giovanni Ruggeri (d. before 1743) built the
Palazzo Cusani. the fagade of which. dating from 1715. has
windows and a balcony of bold Borrominesque curves. Bar-
tolomeo Bolla. a Milanese by birth and training. was re-
sponsible for the Palazzo Arese. now Litta (1743-60), notable
for its impressive door flanked by huge Atlantes. a formula
much used in Genoese palaces — as well as by Puget on the
Hotel-de-Ville of Toulon — but which goes back to Leone
Leonis Palazzo degli Omenoni (c.1573) in Milan itself. The
aristocracy of Milan also built numerous villas. of which one of
the most impressive is Ruggeri's Villa Visconti at Brignano.
In the principal cities along the Po Valley building activity of
the same kind occurred in the eighteenth century. but the
architects were competent rather than original. Typical of them
were Gianantonio Veneroni of Pavia. whose Palazzo Mezza-
barba (1728-30) shows a knowledge of the forms of doors and
windows evolved by the Roman successors of Borromini. and
Antonio Arright. who built the grandiose staircase in the
Palazzo Dati (1769) at Cremona. Similar examples could be
quoted in most other towns in the Po Valley. Even in much
smaller places, such as Sabbioneta. an occasional detail of great
charm — and originality - may suddenly appear. such as the
door to a former Convent, now the Municipal hospital.
Northern Italy 77
There also arose a local form of Rococo. more closely allied
in form to contemporary work in Naples than to anything
produced in France. The architects who developed this style
were specialists in the designing of staircases. of which brilliant
examples are to be found in the Palazzo Crivelli. Milan (archi-
tect and date unknown). the Palazzo Albertoni-Arrigoni at
Crema. attributed to Giuseppe Cozzi. and the Palazzo Stanga
at Cremona. designed by the owner, who was a competent
amateur architect. Mantua has several small palaces with
windows and doors in full Rococo style. but neither their date
nor their authors seem to be known.
lt might be expected that Bologna would have produced a
great architectural movement complementary to its flourishing
school of painting in the seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries, but this is not the case. The academic tradition of the
city in the arts would clearly not have been congenial to a
flowering of the Baroque. but even the most successful architect
of the period. Carlo Francesco Dotti (1670-1759). never rose
above mediocrity." His contemporaries. Giovanni Battista
Piacentini and Francesco Maria Angelini (1680-1731). pro-
duced impressive variants of the grand Baroque staircase in the
Palazzo Ruini-Ranuzzi, now the Palace of Justice (1695). and
the Palazzo Montanari.!°
The main contribution of Bologna to architecture was,
however. made in an indirect way. through the art of stage-
design, which reached its highest point in the work of the Galli-
Bibiena family. Ferdinando (1657-1743). his brother Fran-
cesco (1659-1731). and his two sons, Giuseppe (1696-1757) and
Antonio (1700—74).!! The art of guadratura or the painting of
trompe loeil architectural perspectives had been a speciality of
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100 Ferdinando Galli Bibiena, drawing of a stage design. London, British
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100
102
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101 Above Venice, S. Maria della Salute by Baldassare Longhena, plan and
section, begun 1631
102 Above right Sabbioneta, Cathedral, the dome of the Chapel of the
Sacrament by Antonio Galli Bibiena, c. 1770
103 Opposite S. Maria detla Salute, exterior detail showing scrolls
Bolognese painters since the last years of the sixteenth century
and had reached an astonishing point of virtuosity mn the hands
of Angelo Michele Colonna (1600-87) and Agostino Mitelh
(1609-60). who worked in collaboration, and this art was now
apphed with brilliant results to the designing of stage-sets. The
Bibiena family set a fashion which spread all over Europe, and
they themselves held posis in Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, and
Mannheim, as well as Parma and other Italian cities.
Some members of the family also erected real buildings.
Francesco built the celebrated Teatro Farnese at Parma (1720:
destroyed during the Second World War), and Antonio the
smaller but beautiful municipal theatre at Bologna (1750).
Antonio was also active in ecclesiastical architecture. He added
the chapel of the Sacrament to the Immaculata at Sabbioneta
and built the parish church a! Villa Pasquali nearby. These two
buildings are notable for the extraordinary decoration of the
domes, which consists of an open network of stucco standing
out against the outer shell, which is painted sky-blue and
brilliantly lit by concealed windows, almost like the pierced
decoration in some Islamic domes. A variant of this unusual
design was used by the unknown architect of the Palazzo Gang!
at Palermo.
Venice
The ghosts of Palladio and Scamozzi hung so heavily over
Venice in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that they
prevented Venetian architects — and Venetian patrons — from
developing a full Baroque style. Architects of the period in
Venice and on the ferra firma continued to imitate the models
created in the sixteenth century, mainly those of Palladio, but
they sometimes used forms current in the generation before
him, for instance for churches the Greek cross in a square,
which was popular in the first half of the sixteenth century.!”
The single exception to the general rule was Baldassare
Longhena (1598-1682) who, in the church of S. Maria della
Salute, produced one of the masterpieces of Baroque archi-
tecture.!? Longhena was trained tn the studio of Scamozzi, and
his early works, such as the Palazzo Giustiniani-Lolin (probably
designed in 1627) or Palazzo Widman (c. 1630), are markedly
conservative, even going back to early Ctnquecento types
rather than to the more fully developed models of Sansovino or
Sanmichelit, or those of his own master. Longhena’s great
opportunity came, however, when in 1631, at the age of 33, he
was commissioned by the Senate to build the Salute in ful-
filment of a vow made lo the Virgin during the plague of 1630,
The plan of the church, which is basically octagonal, may
have been inspired by the sixteenth-century churches of this
form which abound in Lombardy, but Longhena has trans-
formed his model by surrounding it with an ambulatory and
adding to it a choir of novel design, consisting of a bay with an
apse at each end, closed by an arch which covers the high altar
and leads to the coro or monks’ choir. These units are bound
together by a careful control of light: the main space Is strongly
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104 Above Canaletto, View of S. Maria della Salute, Venice. Windsor
Castle, Royal Collection
105 Right S. Maria della Salute, interior
lit by the windows in the dome; the choir ts much darker, lit
from above, and the coro is slightly lighter, with windows in the
walls. The result is a succession of light and dark spaces, the
effect of which is intensified by the four free-standing columns
which flank the high altar and stand out against the lighter coro
in a manner reminiscent of Palladio’s designs at S. Giorgio and
the Redentore.
104 For the external appearance of the church Lunghena drew
extensively on Antonio da Sangallo the Younger’s design for S.
Giovanni dei Fiorentini — recorded in engravings in Labacco’s
103. Architettura — particularly for the huge scrolls which support
the dome and which are the dominating feature of the Salute as
seen from a distance across the Grand Canal. Longhena has
altered his model in several significant ways. He made the whole
building simpler by changing the plan from a sixteen-sided
polygon to an octagon, thus reducing the number of scrolls to
eight, and at the same time he increased the size of the scrolls,
thus making the general effect more powerful and less fussy
than the sixteenth-century model. In Sangallo’s design each of
the sixteen facets of the building is decorated with a single
tabernacle, except for the entrance, which has a fagade covering
three bays. Longhena, on the other hand, established a sort of
crescendo by varying the decoration on the outside of the
chapels. Those on the cross-axis of the church have single
106 Venice. interior of the Gesuati by Giorgio Massari, ¢c. 1736
pilasters at the corners, whereas those on the diagonals, flank-
ing the entrance, have four pilasters. the outer ones being
supported by half-pilasters. and in addition three niches with
statues. These lead up to the climax of the entrance facade.
which is not only broader than the chapels. but is boldly
articulated with full columns which enclose two rows of niches,
again with statues. This fagade is topped by a balustrade on
which stand five statues. as opposed to the three on the
pediments of the chapels. This building up of architectural and
sculptural decoration towards the central feature is reminiscent
of Maderno’s method on the facade of S. Susanna, but it 1s here
applied to a more complex structure in three dimensions. The
combination of sculpture and architecture is typically Venetian
and can be seen as an extension of the system used by Sansovino
in the Library. and by Scarpagnino on the facade of the Scuola
di S. Rocco. Moreover, 1t was to remain one of the hall-marks
of Venetian Baroque throughout the seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries. Longhena used it again in similar form on
the fagade of S. Giustina, now deprived of its pediment. but in
his S. Maria dei Derelitti or dell’Ospedaletto the sculpture takes
over completely and the architectural elements almost disap-
pear. The lower storey 1s composed of an Ionic Order, of which
the square piers are covered with high reliefs of lions’ masks and
bunches of fruit; the upper storey has an Order of Atlantes, and
the attic is covered with shields and other decorative elements.
The same method 1s applied by Giuseppe Sardi on the fagade of
S. Maria del Gigho (or S. Maria Zobenigo: 1678-83) and at the
Scalzi (1683-89). by Alessandro Tremignon at S. Moisé (1668).
107 Venice. fagade of S. Maria degli Scalzi by Giuseppe Sardi, 1683-89
and by Domenico Rosso at S. Stae (after 1709). though in these
cases the architectural frame-work 1s more clearly in evidence
than in the Ospedaletto. In Giovanni Battista Fattoretto’s
facade of the Gesuiti (1715) the architecture reasserts its
position fully and the front builds up in a series of whole
columns, breaking forward and backward in a manner re-
miniscent of certain Sicilian facades. such as Andrea Palma’s on
the cathedral at Syracuse or Rosario Gaghiardis S. Giorgio at
Ragusa Ibla. It is characteristic of these Venetian facades that,
even when the architects make great play with sculpture, 1t is
never fused with the architecture, as it 1s with Bernini, but
retains 1ts independent existence.
The Venetian architects of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries use a variety of forms in their fagades. At the Osped-
aletto, S. Maria Zobenigo, and S. Moise the front consists of
two storeys of equal width. topped by an attic. but at S. Stae the
two storeys are united by a giant Order in the manner of
Palladio, and at the Scalzi Sardi uses the Roman type, with a
wider lower storey. though the proportions are heavier than
would be normal tn a Roman church.
The interior architecture of Venetian churches continued
throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to be
simple and designed in Palladian terms, as for instance in the
Gesuati (c. 1736) by Giorgio Massari, which, however, shows a
trace of influence from Longhena in the placing of the high altar
against the arch leading to the well-lit coro. The only exception
is the Gesuiti, where the architect, Domenico Rossi, has tn-
dulged in an outburst of inlaid-marble decoration which has
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hardly any parallels north of Naples. It is true that, compared
with the southern examples, the effect is relatively simple.
because the pattern of the inlay is broader and less complicated,
and because the colours are limited to grey-green and white, but
the impression is still one of great richness, reaching a climax in
the choir, where the four full columns are decorated with the
inlay,
Domestic architecture in Venice was conservative through-
out the period under consideration. The palace plan estab-
lished by the middle of the sixteenth century continued to be
used till the end of the eighteenth. These palaces are designed
round a long vestibule on the ground floor running right
through the building from the middle of the canal facade. From
this vestibule a staircase leads to the sa/one on the piano nobile,
followed by a gallery running right over the vestibule to the
canal and flanked by suites of smaller rooms overlooking the
side-canals or streets. The disadvantage of this plan is that the
tO8 Right Venice, high altar of the Gesuiti by Domenico Rossi, t7t5—29
109 Below Venice, fagade of the Palazzo Rezzonico by Baldassare
Longhena, c. 1667. Top floor added by Giorgio Massari, 752-56
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gallery. being only lit at one end. is apt to be dark. but the
salone, lit on three sides. makes a magnificent approach to the
piano nobile.
The tacgades follow the pattern laid down by Sansovino and
Sanmicheli in the mid sixteenth century — which itself was based
on late-mediaeval models — with a central section. usually of
three bays, on each floor, corresponding to the vestibule and
gallery. flanked by windows for the smaller rooms. In the
Palazzo Rezzonico and the Palazzo Pesaro Longhena did little
more than enrich the detail by the addition of rustication and a
slightly increased use of sculpture, reminiscent of his treatment
of church facades.
The staircase formed an important feature of most Venetian
palaces. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it usually
followed the pattern of a single flight doubling back on itself.
110 Below Palazzo Rezzonico, the bal!-room, frescoed by G. B. Crosato.
with architectural guadratura probably by Agostino Mengozzi Colonna.
“oa het)
11] Below right Venice, S. Giorgio Maggiore, the staircase by Baldassare
Longhena, 1643-45
Northern Italy 83
the two flights being covered by a single vault and not being
separated from each other by a wall as in Central Italian
sixteenth-centurvy staircases. Some of the finest examples of this
type of staircase by Longhena can be tound in ecclesiastical
buildings. the Seminario Patriarcale and the Convent of SS.
Giovanni e Paolo, and it was also for a religious body that he
designed his most remarkable creation in this fleld. the staircase
at S. Giorgio Maggiore (1643-45). This is of the Imperial form.
dividing into two branches at the first landing and following
round the walls enclosing the whole staircase. This type of
Staircase was invented in Spain in the middle of the sixteenth
century — the earliest surviving example is in the Alcazar at
Toledo — and had been used in Genoa in the Palazzo Doria-
Tursi and the University. but Longhena gives it a breadth and
an openness lacking in the Genoese examples. where the site 1s
cramped owing to the rising ground at the end of the site. It is
the first grand and spacious Italian staircase and a direct
predecessor to the Escalier des Ambassadeurs at Versailles.
In the eighteenth century palace facades were influenced by
the Palladian revival created by architects such as Giorgio
Massari, but at the same time the interior decoration remained
extremely rich. The ceilings were embellished with stuccoes and
frescoes, from the hand of Tiepolo and his contemporaries, as 1n
the salone of the Palazzo Rezzonico. In certain of these rooms.
for instance in the salone of the Palazzo Widman, the
architectural features are reduced to insignificance. and are
replaced by a play of stucco or fresco decoration. In smaller.
more intimate rooms a real Rococo stvle appears. Sometimes,
as in the Ridotto Venier, the whole ceiling 1s covered by a wave
of stucco curtains or clouds which completely obscure the
boundaries of the space. and in others — particularly in some of
the smaller rooms in the Palazzo Ducale — the walls are hghtls
decorated with touches of stucco thrown on the wall and
modelled with the spatula. almost like South Bavarian Rococo
decoration. Perhaps the most exquisite example of the style 1s
the series of mezzanine rooms in the Palazzo Foscarini. 1n
1 76
84 Partl Italy
which the ceiling has gilt Rococo curls cutting across a sky
against which fly birds, and the walls are decorated with
chinoiserie panels painted in gold on a ground composed of
white tiles, which give a peculiar luminosity to the whole room.
This playful and elegant type of Rococo was even better suited
to the decoration of country houses than to palaces. and
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112 Venice, Palazzo Foscarini, room on the mezzanine floor
exquisite examples of it can be found in many villas on the terra
firma.
As might be expected, the Baroque took even less hold on
Vicenza than on Venice, and the tradition of Palladio and
Scamozzi continued to dominate the architecture of the town.
Curtously enough, however, in the eighteenth century a certain
number of church fagades were built on a Roman pattern (S.
Vincenzo, S. Gaetano, S. Marco degli Scalzi), but they are of no
quality.
The South
As has been pointed out in the Introduction, architecture in
Florence was hardly touched by the Baroque.’ It has been
argued elsewhere that Gherardo Silvanr’s facade to S. Gaetano
is Baroque, but it is entirely flat and its decoration is taken
directly from Buontalenti. The Cappella Feroni in the SS.
Annunziata— built on the design of I] Volterrano and decorated
by Foggini— qualifies better, but it is really a work of sculpture,
an art in which the Florentines were much more influenced by
the Baroque than in architecture. The church of S. Giuseppe,
near S. Croce, by Giacinto Manni, shows some awareness of
Roman Baroque methods of design, but the only works of
architecture executed in a true Baroque manner in Florence
were done by an artist who, though Tuscan by birth, was purely
Roman by training—Pietro da Cortona’s decorations in the
rooms on the piano nobile in the Palazzo Pitt. In these rooms
the artist created a new manner of combining stucco and fresco
which was to have a considerable influence outside Italy,
particularly in France; but it is typical of the atmosphere in
Florence that his bold and highly original project for extending
the Pitti Palace itself was rejected in favour of one by a local
architect which stmply repeated the Quattrocento pattern to an
almost mtolerable length.
In other parts of Italy, such as the Marches, Umbria, or the
Abruzzi, there was little building activity of interest during the
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, though almost
every village church was at least renovated in a vernacular
Baroque style; and the other centres in which real and in-
dividual Baroque styles were produced are to be found in the
South, above all in Naples and Sicily.
Naples
The circumstances in which the Baroque developed in Naples
were very different from those which prevailed in other Italian
cities.2 In Rome everything depended on the papacy; in Turin
architects satisfied the ambitions of the house of Savoy; in
Venice they followed the dictates of the Senate or, to a lesser
extent, the religious orders and the wealthy citizens. During the
greater part of the period in question Naples was simply a
province of Spain, governed — often very badly — from Madrid
through the intermediary of a viceroy, who was generally more
occupied with defending the coast against the attacks of pirates
and areas inland against the activities of bandits than in
embellishing the city. On the other hand, as the viceregal court
was developed and the nobility were tempted more and more to
abandon their estates and spend the greater part of their time
dancing attendance on the viceroy, the need for new or at least
redecorated palaces increased and many Neapolitan nobles
spent far more than they could afford on creating a fine setting
for their lives in the city. It was, however, above all the Church
that fostered the outburst of building activity that took place in
the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth
century. Neapolitans were famous for their piety — or super-
stition — and they spent enormous sums on building churches
and chapels, as well as endowing masses for the repose of their
souls. Further, many fathers found 1t more economical to put
their daughters into a convent than to pay a dowry for them,
and on each such occasion a substantial gift accompanied the
novice and went into the coffers of the convent. In size and
wealth the religious houses in Naples far surpassed those of all
pe
other Italian cities. Certain areas of the town were almost
entirely given over to convents and monasteries, and, as they
housed only a fraction of the population that the area would
have accommodated, their existence and continual expansion
led to the appalling overcrowding of the city which was a
perpetual source of worry to the authorities.
When Alfonso of Aragon captured Naples in 1442, he
determined to establish the new Renaissance style to replace the
Gothic favoured by the Angevins and, in order to do this. he
invited a number of distinguished Tuscan architects to come to
Naples and design the palaces, villas, and churches with which
he intended to enrich his new capital. In so doing he established
a practice which prevailed for a long time in Naples. and it was
not tll the early seventeenth century that a style of architecture
arose which could properly be called Neapolitan. The last
foreign invasion was constituted by three major architects:
Domenico Fontana, who escaped to Naples from Rome after
the death of his patron, Sixtus V. and built the palace of the
viceroy; the Florentine Giovanni Antonio Dosio, who laid out
the great cloister in the Certosa of S. Martino, and the Jesuit
Father Giuseppe Valeriano, who built the principal church of
his order in Naples, the Gesu Nuovo, which, however, owes
most of its present magnificence to the rich marble and fresco
decoration added to it—ina spirit quite contrary to Valeriano’s
desire for simplicity — in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies. It is curious to notice that during the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries all the visiting architects came from Central
or Northern Italy and that, in spite of the fact that Naples was
under the dominion of Spain, there is hardly any trace of
Spanish influence in the development of architecture, either at
this time or during the Baroque period.
The first architect to stand out as having created an iden-
tifiably Neapolitan style is Fabrizio Grimaldi (1543-1613), who
in his churches, such as S. Maria degli Angeli a Pizzofalcone
(begun 1600). established a model for spacious Latin-cross
churches articulated internally with elaborately clustered pilas-
ters, which was to be followed in Naples for more than a
century.
The creator of Neapolitan Baroque architecture was Cosimo
Fanzago (1591-1678), who was born near Bergamo but came to
Naples at the age of seventeen and became in the fullest sense of
the word naturalized. He was trained as a marble-worker, and
his greatest achievements are in the decoration of churches and
chapels rather than in planning, but in his particular field he
had no rival.
Southern Italy and Sicily were rich in coloured marbles, and
Fanzago took advantage of this fact to create some of the most
resplendent decorative effects in occidental architecture. Curi-
ously enough the possibilities of using coloured marbles for the
decoration of churches were first exploited in Central Italy, in
Rome and also in Florence. where it can be regarded as a sort of
extension of the local art of inlaying furniture with the semi-
precious pietre dure. It seems to have been introduced into
Naples by Domenico Fontana and by the Florentine sculptor
Michelangelo Naccherino (1550-1622), who established a
successful workshop for decorative marbling in the city; but it
was left for Fanzago to exploit the full possibilities of the
medium. This he did in a series of chapels, in which the most
elaborate patterns of coloured marbles, some abstract, some
imitating flowers. are combined with white marble decoration
in relief, based on the forms invented by Buontalenti which
Naccherino had brought to Naples.
The South 85
In the Certosa of S. Martino, where he worked for more than
thirty years, Fanzago deployed his art to the fullest extent. In
the cloister ~ which he completed to the designs of Dosio, but
adding his own decorative detail ~ he developed his Buontal-
entesque vocabulary to a new point of complexity, particularly
in the doors, in which he combined figure sculpture, which he
executed himself, with decorative and architectural detail, some
quite naturalistic, like the swags of hanging fruit, some more
ambiguous, like the cartouches over the doors, which are
apparently intended to look like grotesque masks. In the
church, of which the choir had already been decorated before he
took over, he produced a wonderful harmony of colour effects,
dominated by yellows, warm browns, and dull reds, which
continue the tones of the frescoes which Lanfranco, Ribera,
and others painted on the vault in the spandrels and beside the
windows. The marbling spreads not only over the walls and
pilasters but across the whole floor — brilhantly restored in the
1960s — so that the visitor is enveloped in gay and rich colours,
strengthened by the sun which streams in through the windows.
The marbling is entirely executed in flat inlay, except for the
huge rosettes on the piers separating the chapels, which are in
dark grey, almost black marble, the carving of which is perhaps
the most remarkable example of Fanzago’s virtuosity.
As a pure architect Fanzago was less inventive than as a
decorative sculptor. His church plans are conventional, and he
showed a preference for the simple Greek cross, which had
113 Naples, Certosa di S. Martino, the cloister begun by G. A. Dosio,
c. 1600. Completed and decorated by Cosimo Fanzago, 1623-29
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completely gone out of fashion in Rome. It is only in his fagades
that he shows real originality. In several of these he was faced
with the problem — common in Neapolitan churches - of having
the nave at a higher level than the street on which the church
faced, and in two churches, S. Giuseppe a Pontecorvo and S.
Maria della Sapienza, he solved this ingeniously by placing the
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The South 8&7
Steps in two flights behind the facade. at S. Giuseppe running
round the walls of a vestibule, and at the Sapienza parallel with
the facade.
His most remarkable building, however, 1s the huge Palazzo
Donn ‘Anna built in 1642-44 for the Spanish viceroy. the duke
of Medina. and his wife, who was heiress to the vast wealth of
the Carafa family. It is a large block composed of three wings
round a narrow court, on a rock projecting into the sea below
the heights of Posillipo. to the west of Naples. The palace was
never finished and has suffered from neglect over the last three
centuries. but an engraving made in the 1760s gives an idea of it
when its main outlines were clearer than they are now. It was
planned to be approached from the sea. and the viceregal barge
would have tied up under a triple arcade on the east side, like
that visible on the main facade but one floor lower. The triple
arcade was the outstanding feature of the design and was
repeated on three floors on each facade. The main front is
broken by recessed bays on the top floor. and the corners are cut
off and given different treatment on each floor — a flat panel on
the ground floor. a semi-circular bay on the first. and a
118 Left Naples, detail of the high altar of S. Domenico Maggiore by
Cosimo Fanzago. c. 1650
119 Below left Naples. slaircase in the Palazzo Barlolomeo di Maio by
Ferdinando Sanfelice
120 Below Naples, vault of the church of Villanova by Ferdinando
Sanfelice
120
418
88 Part I Italy
rectilinear recess on the second, an arrangement which
produces sharp variations in depth, the effect of which 1s
heightened by the variations in the treatment of the surfaces of
the different floors — a feature which 1s unfortunately not
indicated in the engraving.
Among Fanzago’s contemporaries were several architects
who were competent but uninventive, and the only individual
work to stand out from their productions 1s the grand staircase
added to the viceregal palace about 1650, almost certainly by
Francesco Antonio Picchiatti, which, like Longhena’s staircase
at S. Giorgio Maggiore, is based on Spanish royal models. It is,
however, wider and more spacious than the earlier examples,
running through seven instead of the usual five bays. It never
received the intended decoration, and the marbling that we see
today was added after the palace was damaged by fire in 1837.
In the last decades of the seventeenth and the first of the
eighteenth centuries there was a revival of a monumental style
with Dionisio Lazzari (1617-89), Arcangelo Gughelmelh (ac-
tive 1674-1717), and Giovanni Battista Nauclerio (active
1676-c.1740), whose churches, articulated internally with full
columns, have an almost Roman grandeur, but at the same time
the decorative tendencies of Fanzago were continued in the
brilliant marbling of Bartolomeo and Pietro Ghetti and the
almost Rococo stonework of Giovanni Battista Nauclerto and
his brother Muzio.
The first half of the eighteenth century saw the rise of two
architects of real distinction: Ferdinando Sanifelice (1675—
1748), and Domenico Antonio Vaccaro (1681-1745).
As an inventor of new forms, both in planning and in
structure, Sanfelice stands out as the most original architect of
the Neapolitan Baroque. His greatest achievements lie in the
designing of churches on unusual ground plans and the bunld-
ing of palaces with dramatic and ingeniously disposed staircases.
It is recorded that he made several designs for churches 1n the
shape of a star, a form unknown in Italy but used occasionally
by Central European architects. They were in fact rejected in
favour of simpler designs, but he actually built a hbrary of this
form in the monastery of S. Giovanni a Carbonara, which was
destroyed in the mineteenth century, and two hexagonal chur-
ches by him survive, one at Villanova, on the top of Posillipo,
the other in a palace belonging to his wife’s family, the Ravas-
chieri, at Roccapiemonte. The latter is very simple in design,
but the former has alternately flat and rounded bays — three of
which contain doors leading to the street, the sacristy and the
monastic buildings — and the central space 1s composed of six
broad and simply designed ribs meeting in a six-lobed panel of
stucco round the symbol of the Trinity in glory.
Sanfelice came of an important and wealthy Neapolitan
family and built for himself a large palace (Palazzo Sanfelice) —
in fact one of the largest eighteenth-century Neapohtan pala-
ces. It is designed round two courts, with a fagade of eleven
bays, broken by three slightly projecting sections, the outer two
containing the monumental entrances flanked by caryatids,
which lead to the two courts. The right-hand court ts closed at
the end opposite the entrance by a grand open staircase. In plan
itis a variant of the Imperialstaircase, differing from the normal
(ype in that it starts with two flights running parallel with the
facade, which turn in and round till they meet again and are
continued in a single flight in the middle bay. This plan has the
advantage of leaving the central bay open to form a vista,
usually through to a garden, but in this case to a sort of grotto,
because the ground rises steeply and the garden 1s at the level of
121 Naples, staircase in the Palazzo Serra di Cassano by Ferdinando
Sanfelice, 1720-38
the first floor. In the placing of the staircase and in its general
plan Sanfelice seems to have had in mind Genoese models, such
as Bianco’s University, but the effect ts far more dramatic,
because whereas in the Genoese palace the staircase is hidden
behind the double loggias of the court, here it opens straight on
to the court itself. Added to this, Sanfelice has made the
staircase not merely open but with the upper stages transparent,
so that the visitor looks through to the back and is aware of the
pattern made by the superimposition of the openings in the
front and back walls. which slope in opposite directions,
following the lines of the flights. Open staircases had been a
feature of Neapolitan architecture since the sixteenth century,
but they had never been given such prominence before or been
treated in such a complex manner.
The other court of the palace has the form of a rectangle with
the corners cut off, and ends with an equally ingenious staircase.
Unlike the one in the right-hand court, this is completely closed
and consists of two spirals which touch each other and have
common lozenge-shaped landings at ground and first-floor
levels. The design is almost certainly based on a mediaeval type,
of which an early sixteenth-century example is in the Burg at
Graz and may have been known to Sanfelice, since he was in
contact with Austria through the impertal viceroys.
Sanfelice designed many closed staircases on unusual plans,
of which a particularly beautiful example ts that in the Palazzo
Bartolomeo di Maio, in the form of a lozenge of which the sides
1i9
121
are all convex inwards. producing an extraordinary effect of
movement and tension.
Sanfelice’s most magnificent staircase 1s in the Palazzo Serra
di Cassano. The palace is built on a large open site. and
Sanfelice was free to design on a grand scale. The main entrance
— now alas! closed — is on the east and leads into an octagonal
court. at the end of which stands the huge arched entrance to
the staircase chamber. The staircase itself 1s on a completely
novel plan. in two halves. in the middle of which are semi-
circular landings. which form a pair of bastions facing the
visitor as he approaches the staircase. The two flights meet at a
bridge in front of the door to the main apartments of the
palace — a form reminiscent of Fischer von Erlach's staircase in
the Winter Palace of Prince Eugene in Vienna (1695). of which
Sanfelice may have seen drawings or the original. if. as 1s
possible. he actually visited Vienna. Most of Sanfelice’s stair-
cases are in simple materials — brick and stucco. or the rough
porous stone of Pozzuoli — but at the Palazzo Serra he has
plaved a more elaborate game. The staircase itself is in a rough
dark-grey volcanic stone, but the detail — which ts ultimately
Fanzaghesque in derivation — stands out against it in a fine.
creamy marble.
All his life Sanfelice was active in designing the temporary
Structures which the Neapolitans loved to erect on any
important occasion — a wedding. a birth or a funeral. or the
feast day of S. Gennaro. the patron saint of Naples. Generally
122 Calvizzano. near Naples. S. Maria delle Grazie by Domenico Antonio
Vaccaro, interior of dome. probably dating from the 1730s
The South 89
these were altars set up in the street, 1n which the fact of working
in wood and plaster instead of solid materials allowed the
architect to indulge in liberties of design which he never took in
his permanent buildings: but on really important occasions, for
instance the birth of Charles III’s first son. the whole piazza in
front of the Palazzo Reale was enclosed 1n a vast hemicycle of
arcades with booths and shops. in the middle of which stood a
tall tower. almost like a pagoda.
If Sanfelice was essentially an inventor of architectural
forms. Vaccaro was the continuer of the decorative tradition
established by Fanzago. It is true that. when he had a tree hand
in planning a church. he showed considerable skill, as. for
instance, in the Concezione a Montecalvario (17) 8-24). which
is composed of an elongated octagon. surrounded by chapels
forming an ambulatory. or in S. Michele. which consists of a
series of square elements. but his rea] talent was for decorative
effects. whether in stucco. marble. or maiolica tiles. His skill in
fusing architecture and decoration is shown in the Concezione.
where. in addition to designing the building. he planned the
stucco and painted the altarpieces. producing a whole which
bears the marks of his personality in every detail.
Perhaps his most striking work is at S. Maria delle Grazie at
Calvizzano, a few miles north of Naples. where he added choir
and transepts to an already existing nave. Here he created a
spacious and luminous structure. evenly and strongly lit and
painted white. The most remarkable feature. however. 1s the
dome. In this he eliminated al] the structural lines — such as the
join of drum and cupola — and swathed the whole surface in a
sort of stucco awning. which opens at the top on to a cloud-
flecked skv around the lantern, thus producing an effect which
can properly be called Rococo.
In his treatment of inlaid marble altars and altar-rails
Vaccaro is even more explicitly Rococo. He started from the
forms established by Fanzago and his followers. but he elimin-
ates. as far as possible. all architectural features. The firmly
articulated divisions and clearly defined scrolls of Fanzago are
dissolved in rocaille panels and curved elements more like
branches than architectural members — an effect underlined by
the addition of putti among them. The altars. which with
Fanzago were always in one plane. now swing ina curve behind
the mensa, which is itself often supported by a sort of sar-
cophagus-urn with acurved silhouette. The marble inlay itself ts
given a new liveliness by the introduction of high-relief sculp-
ture in white marble. consisting partly of decorative moufs. but
also of full-relief putti who cling to the ends of the altars. The
tops of the altar-rails — which from the functional point of view
should be flat — are often broken by curves or ornaments. The
most fantastic example of this method of designing Is to be seen
in the altar-rails in the church at S. Martino, probably by
Giuseppe Sammartino (1720-93). a follower of Vaccaro. where
the cartouches on the top of the rails — of a richly Rococo form —
contain panels of lapis Jazuli. onyx. agate. and other semi-
precious stones.
Vaccaro did not, however. depend entirely on the use of rich
materials, and his most enchanting decorative scheme is the
cloister in the wealthy convent of S. Chiara. This is laid out with
pergolas supported on octagonal piers in coloured maitolica. on
which are depicted twining clusters of vine which fuse with the
real vines stretching over the walks. Between the piers are
benches. also of maiolica. with scenes taken from engravings by
Callot and other purely secular sources. and at one of the points
where the walks cross is a fountain. on the bottom of which
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The whole is a pure Rococo dream.
In 1751 Charles (Il, who had become king of the two Sicilies
when the Bourbons were restored to Naples in 1734, decided on
a vast plan of public works and summoned to Naples for this
purpose two foreign architects, Ferdinando Fuga (1699-
123 Above Naples, Certosa di S. Martino, altar-rails, probably designed by
Giuseppe Sammartino, c. 1760
124 Left Naples, S. Chiara, maiolica cloister by Domenico Antonio
Vaccaro, 1739-42
125 Opposite Caserta, staircase in the Royal Palace by Luigi Vanvitelli
1781), and Luigi Vanvitelli (1700-71). Fuga was a Floren-
tine by birth, and Vanvitelli was the son of a Dutch painter
called van Wittel, but both had been trained in Rome, where
they represented the classicizing tendency fostered by Clement
XII. They brought with them a style completely foreign to the
traditions of Naples and, though they left their mark on the city
by the sheer bulk of their buildings, their style was never
assimilated bv local architects, who continued to work in the
manner of Vaccaro or Sanfelice till the full Classical revival set mn
during the first decades of the nineteenth century?
Fuga designed several palaces for Neapolitan families, of
which the two most important, built for the Giordano and
Aquiro di Caramanico familes, stand side by side in the Via
Medina. looking like Roman intruders; but his most important
commission was the construction of the Albergo dei Poveri, a
vast poor-house, in which Charles Hf planned to house the
many beggars for which Naples was notorious. The building,
more than 400 yards long, was never finished and lacks the
church which was to have been the centre of the complex, with
arms radiating to all parts of it, but as it stands it is a long bleak
front, almost unbroken, except for a slightly projecting central
pavilion with steps in front of it. The problem of organizing
126
Lo a)
92 Part 1 Italy
:
=
7
+
oy
(26 Above Caserta, Royal Palace by Luigi Vanvitelli, entrance front
designed 1751
127 Opposite Palermo, S. Caterina, altar of St Catherine
such a huge front was a difficult one, but it must be said that
Fuga made very little attempt to solve it.
Scale was also a difficult problem at Caserta, the palace
which Vanvitelh built about fifteen miles north of Naples to
house the king and his by now endless train of courtiers. It
consists of a rectangle, about 200 by 150 yards, divided into
four courts by wings which cross at the centre of the whole
building. Vanvitelli makes little use of Baroque devices to break
up the monotony of the fagades, though greater variety would
have been introduced if the pavilions planned at the four
corners had been built: but in the designing of the central
feature of the interior he shows a real sense of dramatic
planning. The king — or any distinguished visitor — would have
driven into the palace along its main axis till he arrived at the
point where the two inner wings meet. There he would have got
out of his coach in 4 monumentally designed vestibule, from
which he would have had views into all the four courts of the
palace, and a grand vista leading to the park with its mile-long
fountains running down one of the foothills of the Apennines.
To his right he would have seen the grand staircase, designed,
like everything else at Caserta, on a vast scale, and simple but
rich in its decoration — rich in that it is entirely constructed of
marble, but simple in its severe lines and subdued colours. At
the top of the staircase, over the vestibule, was an octagonal
arcaded space, which gave access to the chapel and the apart-
ane
ments of the king and queen. The chapel is clearly inspired by
that of Versailles, and indeed the taste of Louis XIV is evident
in the planning of the staircase and, even more conspicuously,
in the simple rectilinear design of the marbling. The conception
is Baroque, but the detail shows how far Vanvitelli was com-
mitted to the cause of Classicism.
Most of Vanvitelli’s energies were absorbed in the building of
Caserta, but he also executed some work in Naples itself. He
remodelled one or two palaces which are of no great interest,
but he ts responsible for two churches of considerable merit.
The better known is the Annunziata, which was built to replace
a church burnt down in 1757, and is a magnificent and clearly
designed Latin-cross building, with full columns supporting a
flat entablature — perhaps Vanvitelliis most exphicitly Neo-
Classical design — but the smaller oval church, designed for the
Padri Missionari of S. Vincent de Paul, is a very successful
synthesis of a Barogue ground plan and classicizing detail.
Sicily
For almost the whole of the Baroque period Sicily. like Naples,
was governed by a Spanish viceroy, but, as in Naples, Spanish
influence was of no effect in the arts. More surprisingly, the
connection with Naples was also negligible in the field of
architecture* This is no doubt partly due to the traditional
hositility and mutual scorn which exists between Sicilians and
Neapolitans, but it seems also that, when Sicilians needed
stimulus from outside the island, they turned to the real centre
of Baroque, Rome, rather than to Naples. It is, however, above
all important to notice that Sicilian architecture of the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries, generally speaking, was
129
94 Part1 Italy
remarkably independent and developed its own style to satisfy
the needs of its patrons.
These needs were conditioned by circumstances in many
ways similar to those which prevailed in Naples: the develop-
ment of an elaborate viceregal court and the increasing
wealth of the Church. Palermo, as the capital and the seat of the
viceroy, was more in contact with what the Sicilians scornfully
call i/ Continente than other towns in the island, and Roman
influence is apparent in a few — not very interesting — buildings
dating from the last decades of the seventeenth century. A much
more lively style was introduced by Giovanni Biagio Amico
(1684-1754), who appears to have absorbed the ideas of
Borromini directly and interpreted them with typically Sicilian
vigour.
128 Below Bagheria, Villa Valguarnera by Tommaso Napoli, built between
1709 and 1739
129 Top right Palermo, S. Francesco Saverio by Angelo Italia, detail of the
inferior, built between 1684 and 1710
130 Right Palermo, S. Zita, wall decoration in the Cappella de! Rosario,
begun about 1650
Even more remarkable is Angelo Italia (1628-1700), who
produced not only the beautifully harmonious fagade of the
church at Palma di Montechiaro on the south coast of the island,
but also the revolutionary design for S. Francesco Saverto in
Palermo, built on a centralized plan with hexagonal chapels on
the diagonal axis, which run through two storeys and open on
to the central space, an example of the carrying on of one space
into another, which can only be paralleled in the churches of the
Piedmontese Vittone, an architect two generations younger
than Italia.
The Sicilian nobles, whose life was centred on the court of the
viceroy, enlarged and redecorated many of their palaces in
Palermo, but they rarely built them entirely de novo, and the
result 1s often architecturally an unsatisfying compromise.
Fortunately. however, they also felt the need to build villas
outside the city. to which they could retreat in the summer
months — having abandoned their estates even more completely
than their opposite numbers in Naples — and in these villas their
architects had a free hand and produced designs of great
originality. The most celebrated is the Villa Palagonia at
Bagheria. more on account of its grotesque garden sculptures.
added by the eccentric son of the original builder, than for its
architectural qualities, but the neighbouring Villa Valguarnera.
built by the same architect. Tommaso Napoli. between 1709
and 1739, retains its original character more completely and is
among the finest manifestations of the real Sicilian Baroque.
with a double staircase in the form of contrasting curves.
nestling into the deep curve of the facade. The effect is partially
marred by the covered entrance at the top of the steps. added in
the nineteenth century. Many other villas of the same type are
to be found on the Piana dei Colli to the west of Palermo.
The one technique in which the architects of Palermo — and
131 Below Palermo, S. Zila, Oratorio del Rosario by Giacomo Serpotta.
Stucco relief of the Bartle of Lepanto, 1685-88
The South 95
also of Messina - were directly influenced by Neapolitan
architects was in the use of coloured marble inlay. The work of
this kind in Messina was destroyed in the earthquake of 1908.
but Palermo still has three churches — S. Caterina. the Immac-
ulata Concezione, and the Jesuit Casa Professa — and innumer-
able chapels covered with a luxuriant marble decoration.
exceeding in richness and complexity even the work of Vaccaro
and his school in Naples. Long before the Neapolitans. the
architects of Palermo began to introduce white marble figures
and decorative features in high relief. for instance in the
Cappella del Rosario in S. Zita, which dates from about 1650.
The workmanship required for this extremely difficult type of
marble cutting is still to be found in Sicily. and the Casa
Professa, which was badly damaged by a bomb in 1943. has
been restored so skilfully that it is almost impossible to tell new
from old.
Technical skill of the same order was shown by Giacomo
Serpotta (1656-1732) and his son Procopio in the stucco
decoration with which they ornamented a series of oratories
belonging to Palermitan confraternities.. The decoration con-
sists of a flutter of draperies. putti. and swags of fruit round and
over the architectural features. such as pilasters and windows.
131
96 Part I Italy
t32 Above Syracuse, facade of the Cathedral by Andrea Palma, begun in
1728, also showing the colonnade of the Sth-cenlury BC Greek temple
round which the Cathedral was built
133 Opposite Ragusa Ibla, fagade of S. Giorgio by Rosario Gagtiardi, built
1744
In certain cases, for instance in the Oratory ofS. Zita, the artists
introduced not only figures modelled with a high degree of
naturalism, but scenes composed of minute figures in settings
which may include not only buildings but also ships and other
paraphernalia. In this they were following a local tradition
which goes back to the early sixteenth century, when Antonello
Gagini applied the same technique in marble in the decoration
of the apse and in the holy-water stoups of Palermo Cathedral.
Many palaces in Palermo were also redecorated in the
eighteenth century, and in the ballroom of the Palazzo Gangi —
known to many through having been used for the filming of the
ball scene in the Gattopardo (‘The Leopard’) — an unknown
architect produced one of the most brilliant manifestations of
Italian Rococo. Walls, looking-glasses, shutters, chairs and
sofas are all decorated with the most delicate gilt Rococo curls;
the floor is a maiolica map of the sky, and the ceiling has a
double vault, the inner one standing out dark against the outer
painted shell, like Antonio Bibiena’s domes at Sabbioneta and
Villa Pasquall.
The Palazzo Gangi ballroom was the last example of the
gaiety which inspired the architecture of Palermo for a century
and a half. The influence of the French enlightenment began to
penetrate Palermitan society, and with it came a change of
taste. The architects of Palermo produced an attractive variant
of the French style current in the last years of the reign of Louis
XV, ingeniously adapted to the coarser building materials of
the island. Full Neo-Classicism, partly derived from English,
partly from French sources, took over in the very last years of
the century.
In the south-east of the island Syracuse produced a quite
different type of building. The most characteristic is a series of
elegant palaces in a rather simple Baroque idiom, which owe
much of their charm to the fine white stone of which they are
built. A particularly fine example is the Palazzo Beneventano
del Bosco, built by Luciano Ali (begun 1779). In a very
different style is the fagade added to the Cathedral — basically a
Greek temple of the fifth century BC — by Andrea Palma in
1728. In plan this fagade is designed entirely in planes parallel
to the wall of the church, but its progression of columns,
standing free from the wall, produces an effect of movement
which is fully Baroque. It also incorporates one feature which is
typical of Sicilian architecture: it is a belfry as well as a fagade.
In fact it is almost square in plan, and the upper storey encloses
a large bell-chamber opened by broad arches on the sides as well
as on the front. This particular type of belfry-fagade was
developed by Rosario Gagliardi, the most original] architect of
the period in Sicily. He was born in Syracuse and worked over
the whole south-east area, which was called the Val di Noto. His
most impressive works are the churches of S. Giorgio (1744)
and S. Giuseppe at Ragusa Ibla, where he combines the piling
up of free-standing columns with a slightly convex central bay.
In these churches the emphasis on the tower-like character of
the structure is greater than in Palma’s facade at Syracuse, as
they consist of three full storeys. In S. Giorgio the structure
ends with a square dome, double-curved in profile, but at S.
Giuseppe the bells are hung in three arches in a thin wall, an
arrangement which goes back to the Middle Ages and was
widely used in Sicily in the Baroque age.
Noto, between Syracuse and Ragusa, is the most famous
Baroque town in Sicily, mainly because of the fact that, when
the old town was destroyed in the earthquake of 1693, which
devastated the whole south-east of the island, the city council,
guided by a learned and authoritarian landowner, Giovanni
Battista Landolini, decided to rebuild it on a new site, about ten
miles to the south of the old one, and as a result they were able
to create a complete Baroque town, laid out on a regular grid-
system and al} built within half a century in an almost uniform
style. The charm of the town is greatly enhanced by being built
in an exceptionally beautiful yellow stone, which gives a golden
glow to the palaces and churches, but the architecture itself is
not outstanding. Gagliardi built two churches — S. Domenico
and S. Teresa — but they are much less distinguished than his
work at Ragusa; and the Cathedral has a fine fagade of later
date (c. 1770), slightly French in flavour. The most attractive
feature of the palaces is the series of balconies, carried on
grotesque figures or animals, projecting like Gothic gargoyles
from the wall and supported in their turn by grotesque masks
134
ae”
rs \
Se ed
and cherubs’ heads wrapped in deeply cut acanthus leaves. The
cherubs’ heads and the foliage are Baroque in feeling, but the
general character of the ‘gargoyles’ — particularly when they
take on the form of animals — is almost mediaeval. In fact the
tradition of such balconies goes back. in Southern Italy at least,
to the late sixteenth century, and the example on the facade of
S. Croce at Lecce in Apulia. which probably dates from that
period, includes eagles, dragons, and lions which could be
paralleled in the doors of Romanesque churches in many parts
of Southern Italy and Sicily. As will be seen in plate 134, the
actual architecture of these palaces, particularly the windows, 1s
archaic for the mid-eighteenth century and is reminiscent of
late-sixteenth-century Florentine buildings. The Baroque ele-
ments in these palaces are therefore very slight.
Richly carved, somewhat provincial decoration, rather like
that of the palaces of Noto, is to be found on many of the
palaces of Catania, the most important centre of Baroque
architecture on the east coast. which was largely rebuilt after
the earthquake of 1693. The windows of the Palazzo Biscari by
Francesco Battaglia. which are typical of this group, defy
stylistic classification. They are Baroque in the richness and the
depth of the carving, but the architectural members have been
completely eliminated. This feature would ally them to the
Rococo, but they lack the lightness and delicacy essential to this
style, and. unlike Vaccaro and Sammartino in Naples, the
designers did not employ any of the decorative motifs associ-
ated with the Rococo. For want of any better term, their style
could perhaps be described as Catanian Vernacular, a phrase
which would distinguish it from both the true Baroque and the
Rococo and bring it closer to what I want to call the Stile
Salentino in Lecce. In contrast to the external decoration of the
Palazzo Biscari, the salone within is a magnificent example of
full Rococo, marked by a free use of almost liquid stucco,
reminiscent of the decoration to be found in South Bavarian
Rococo churches.
There was, however. another much more sophisticated
school of architecture active at the same time in Catania, of
which the leader was Giovanni Battista Vaccarini (1702-68).
who was born in Palermo but sent to Rome for training in the
early 1720s.° He returned to Catania about 1730 and immedi-
ately became the dominant force in local architecture. His first
commission was to complete the Municipio, begun in the local
style in 1695. He imposed his new manner most obviously in the
central bay, in which the jambs of the doors are canted, and the
movement which this establishes is carried on through the outer
section of the curved balcony into the lines of the windows
above. This treatment of a single feature shows a real under-
standing of the methods of Roman Baroque architects, parti-
cularly of Borromini and the more enterprising architects of the
early-eighteenth century, rather than of Carlo Fontana and his
school, and the same knowledge is implicit in the designs of
Vaccarini’s churches. In S. Giuliano he follows the oval design
of S. Maria di Montesanto, and in S. Agata the Greek cross
of S. Agnese a Piazza Navona. modified by the introduction of
galleries with curved screens — a favourite feature in Catania —
supported by three-cusped arches. In the exteriors of these
churches he shows great originality. On top of the oval dome of
S. Giuliano he set an open belvedere, a common feature in
Sicilian —and Neapolitan — religious houses, designed to enable
the nuns or monks to take the air on hot summer evenings.
Usually these belvederes were placed over some part of the
monastic buildings, and it must be admitted that Vaccarini’s
The South 99
134 Opposite Noto, balcony of the Palazzo Villadorata
135 Above Catania, windows in lhe Palazzo Biscari built by Francesco
Battaglia before 1730
136 Overleaf left Catania, S. Agata by Giovanni Battista Vaccarini,
1748-67
137 Overleaf right G. B. Tiepolo, the Feast of Antony and Cleopatra,
Palazzo Labia, Venice
solution is novel rather than successful. The exterior of S.
Agata, on the other hand, is a masterly interpretation of 136
Borrominesque ideas. The facade consists of a single storey,
with a high attic, crowned with statues and urns, planned in
three concave bays. which form a contrast to the lower storey of
which the outer bays are convex. In this arrangement Vaccarini
is basically following the example of S. Carlino, but he also
introduces non-Borrominesque elements: the ‘fringe’ which
runs across the facade below the balconies to the windows is
derived from Bernini's Baldacchino, and the capitals of the
pilasters, which are composed of palm-leaves, lilies and crowns,
are taken from a plate in Guarini’s treatise. Both these features
gine ¥
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is = oa ai 2 +..2* - nae nme a? a . | z
are treated with great sharpness, made possible by the fine-
grained brown stone of Catania. Unlike most Roman churches
S. Agata is free-standing and designed to be seen from all four
sides. The lower structure leads up to the octagonal drum and
the dome, which ts strongly defined by curiously heavy. roun-
ded ribs.
The innovations of Vaccarini were taken up by Stefano Ittar,
a Tuscan architect who settled in Catania tn 1765 and built a
number of fine churches, of which the most interesting are S.
Placido (finished in 1769) and the Collegiata (c. 1768). In the
former Ittar follows Vaccarini tn his use of contrasting curves,
but in the latter the treatment ts a little more restrained and the
facade is planned on a series of curves, all concave. The detail
also is a little more chaste. in accordance with the growing
tendency towards Classicism, which was felt in Catania as
much as in Palermo.
138 Opposite Palermo, S. Caterina, detail of marble inlay
139 Below Lecce, the church of S. Croce (begun in the lale 16th century
and finished in 1646) and the Celestine convent attached to it (second half
of the 17th century, probably by Giuseppe Zimbalo)
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we leave
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—
The South 103
Lecce and Apulia
The problem of stylistic terminology becomes particularly
acute in the case of Apulta. The phrase Barocco Leccese appears
in every Italian text-book on architecture, and the concept is to
be found in most English works that mention the architecture
of the seventeenth and etghteenth centuries in Southern Italy.
butit can be argued that there ts not a single building in Lecce or
the surrounding district — the Salento — which can properly be
described as Baroque.’
The churches of Lecce — and they are typical of the whole area
— have almost no features 1n common with those of the Roman
Baroque. In plan they are generally rectangular or in the form
of a Latin cross, without any of the sophisticated adjustments
which true Baroque architects applied to these forms. In a very
few cases their designers venture on an oval or an elongated
octagon, but they do so without extracting from these forms
any of the liveliness which they take on in the hands of even a
minor follower of Borromini. Their facades are flat. and
Leccese architects do not seem even to have apprehended the
innovations of Maderno. It is no chance that. when an eight-
eenth-century architect simply applted the decorative sculpture
of the period to the Romanesque front of SS. Niccolo e
i
104 Part! Italy
140 Top Lecce, detail of the fagade of S. Angelo
14t Above Martina Franca, detail of windows and balconies, Palazzo
Mattolese
Cataldo, he produced a fagade which, apart from the twelfth-
century door, could pass as a typical product of the period.
Even the Romanesque rose-window does not disturb the effect,
because the motif was frequently used in the Salento tn the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The charm of Leccese churches lies in their sculptural decor-
ation, but even this has little to do with the Baroque. Its
character is partly dictated by the qualities of the local stone,
which is soft and easy to carve when quarried, but hardens after
a short time when exposed to the atmosphere. It therefore
allowed — one might almost say encouraged — architects to let
their sculptor-assistants loose on the decoration of their build-
ings, and both the facades and the altarpieces of the churches
show arichness and gaiety of decoration which have perhaps no
parallel, save in Sicily. The decorative motifs employed are.
however, mainly derived from a sixteenth-century vocabulary
which had been long out of date in Rome or even Naples. The
explanation probably lies in the fact that Apulia was a very
remote province, forming part of the kingdom of Naples but
cut off from its capital by the mountains, and separated
politically from other provinces in the north, with which it
might have communicated by sea. Leccese architects must,
therefore, have relied primarily on decorative engravings or
pattern-books, and it seems that they continued to use those
published in the late-sixteenth or seventeenth centuries long
after they had been abandoned elsewhere.
The most famous building in Lecce is the church of S. Croce
and the attached Celestine convent, and it illustrates most of the
features of the local architecture. The lower half of the fagade
was probably decorated in the last years of the sixteenth and the
first years of the seventeenth centuries, and the upper half ts
dated 1646; but the archaic elements are startling. The rose-
window is a direct imitation of the Romanesque type men-
tioned above in connection with SS. Niccold e Cataldo, and the
supports of the balcony — mentioned in relation to the archi-
tecture of Noto — have equally strong mediaeval features. The
columns of the lower floor have the weightiness of those to be
found ina Norman cathedral, and those above, decorated with
low-relief carvings and encircled with bands of lotus-leaves are
of a type which would be conceivable in North Italy in the early
sixteenth century but had long passed out of fashion.
The facade of the monastery dates from the second half of the
seventeenth century — it is probably by Giuseppe Zimbalo— but
it has few affinities with the Baroque. It is true that the broken
and curved pediments derive ultimately from Borromini, but
they are thinned by being seen through engravings. The little
motifs in the corners of each rusticated bay have also a feature
very typical of Leccese decoration and quite antithetical to the
Baroque: they look as though they had been cut out of plywood
with a fret-saw.
There is in fact only one building in Lecce that conforms in
any fundamental way to the principles of the Baroque, namely
the facade of S. Matteo, and that, as has been pointed out by
local historians, stands out as a freak in the architecture of the
town. The church is said to have been built by a local architect
called Achille Carducci between 1667 and 1690, but it is not
certain that he was responsible for the fagade, added in 1700,
which is entirely dilferent stylistically from the interior, One has
the impression that the facade was built by an architect who had
seen real Baroque works — perhaps the churches of Gagliardi in
Sicily — and had attempted, not altogether successfully, to
imitate them.
140
139
141
The above analysis is not intended to denigrate Leccese
architecture of the seventeenth and eighicenth centuries. but
only to show that it cannot properly be included in the category
of the Baroque. Its charms are undeniable. The sculptural
decoration is lively in conception. rich in detail — often sym-
bolical and allusive — beautiful in colour. and skilful in execu-
tion, except where the human figure is involved, but the
architecture would be better classified — as has been suggested 1n
the introduction of this section - under some term such as Srile
Salentino rather than as a subdivision of the Baroque.
If there is no real Baroque architecture in Apulia. there is a
small group of Rococo buildings of a sophistication unexpected
in such a remote area. Apart from one or two churches. for
instance one at Muro Leccese. the buildings in question are all
to be found in the town of Martina Franca. between Taranto
and Bari. outside the area dominated by the Leccese style. The
town has been since the Middle Ages the centre of a flourishing
wine trade and. though it was for a time under the domination
of the Grimaldi family. it has a long tradition of democratic
government and evenly distributed wealth. This 1s at once
apparent from the fact that. apart from the ducal palace. which
is of little interest architecturally. the town 1s composed of small
palazzi. which are simply town houses of anything between
three and seven bays. built on the street without a courtvard. all
white-washed and decorated with extremely fine Rococo doors
and windows. deeply cut in a warm, dark-brown stone. The
main church. dedicated to S. Martino, 1s by an otherwise
unrecorded architect called Giovanni Mariani. who may also
have built the church at Muro Leccese, but is certainly not the
author of the Rococo palaces. many of which have almost
identical details and appear to be by a single hand. We are,
therefore. faced with the unusual problem of an isolated group
of buildings in a remote part of Apulia, having nothing in
common with the style of neighbouring towns. and yet highly
sophisticated in stvle and skilful in execution, designed by an
architect who is unknown and whose work 1s not found
elsewhere. Was he a talented local craftsman, working on the
basis of engravings which he obtained from some major centre
— perhaps Naples — but ifso. what are the engravings? Or was he
a foreigner trained in one of these major centres? If so, we are
compelled to ask which centre. because his work is unlike
anything to be found in Naples or Rome. or even Palermo. Only
a search of the town archives could provide the solution — and it
is quite likely that these are incomplete. in which case the
mystery will remain.
Baroque architecture reached maturity in Rome and northern
Italy and these areas were to provide the main sources from
which it spread te the other parts of Europe. The process of
diffusion varied in different countries but certain common
features appear in almost all areas.
The fame of Rome as the artistic centre of the world exer-
cised a fascination in all countries outside Italy and aroused a
desire to emulate the art which she had created or was creating:
but other non-artistic factors also plaved an important part in
the spread of the Baroque style. The links were often dynastic or
political. In France an Italian queen and later an Italian first
minister fostered the growth of a taste for the Baroque: in
Bavaria. a Savoyard electress encouraged a connection estab-
lished through the proximity of the area round the Italian lakes
which produced the excellent masons who for generations had
migrated to Southern Germany and Austria. In Salzburg the
The South 105
taste of u series of archbishops encouraged more sophisticated
architects from Italy to settle in their city, and towards the end
of the seventeenth century the emperor and the members of the
imperial court succeeded in attracting to Vienna artists of
considerable distinction. including Fra Andrea Pozzo.
Ecclesiastical links were also important. especially those
established by the Jesuits. who insisted that all building schemes,
from whatever part of Europe. should be submitted to Rome for
approval. and the central organization in Rome did not hesitate
to make criticisms or, if necessary. to supply alternative plans.
In addition to the migration of artists from Italy, there was a
movement in the opposite direction. It was the ambition of
every young artist working north of the Alps — whether archi-
tect. sculptor or painter — to visit Rome and to study there the
great works of the past and those which were being executed in
his own day. and contemporary biographers always note —
almost apologetically — the cases of artists who failed to achieve
this ambition. At the end of the seventeenth century and during
the first vears of the eighteenth the studio of Carlo Fontana
was, as has already been said. a centre of training to which all
young architects sought admission. But for those who could not
make the journey there were other means of getting acquainted
with what was taking place in Rome. Travelling artists often
brought home drawings of what they had seen in Italy, and
from the end of the seventeenth century there was a regular
output of engravings reproducing the work of the major
Roman masters. In the early volumes such as Falda’s Nuovo
Teatro delle Fabbriche .... di Roma (1665) the engravings only
give general views of the buildings in question, but Ferrerio’s
Palazzi di Roma includes accurate ground-plans and elevations.
In the eighteenth century the position grew even better and the
two volumes of engravings of Borromini's two major works — S.
Ivo and the Oratory of S. Filippo Neri — published in 1720 and
1725, and three volumes of Rossi's Studio d’Architetnira Civile
(1702-21) provided reliable measured drawings not only of
whole buildings but of details such as doors. windows, balu-
strades and fireplaces. These books played a vital part in
making the vocabulary of the Roman Baroque accessible to
architects all over Europe — and even farther afield in the
Spanish and Portuguese colonies of Central and South Amer-
ica. In the following chapters the dissemination of the Baroque.
the modifications which it underwent in the different areas, and
the varied forms -— sometimes highly fantastic — which it took on
will be studied in detail.
France - the first country to be considered — presents a special
case. It had gone through the process of Italiamization earlier
and more thoroughly than any other European country — with
the possible exception of Spain - and it had created its own
synthesis of Italian and northern elements so as to establish a
genuine Renaissance style of its own. Its commercial and
political links with Italy were close and continuous - though
not always friendly ~ and it was, so to speak. on familiar terms
with Rome culturally: it could take what it wanted and reject
what it felt was alien to its own clearly defined and proudly held
principles. lt was able to absorb Italian innovations gradually.
because its artistic tradition did not suffer the total interruption
which befell Central Europe asa result of the Thirty Years War,
and by the early years of Louis XIV’s personal reign felt
sufficient self-confidence to reject Bernini and commit the
completion of the Louvre to French architects.
Part II
Hrance
Introduction
The French, in their flirtation with the sensuous forms and
emotive devices characteristic of the Roman Baroque, were
cavaher from the outset and, though they never decisively
rejected such forms, it may be said that Bernint’s visit to Paris in
1665 was the occasion for the opposition to Italian influence to
rally its forces in favour of rational French Classicism. Yet who
were the French in this connection: the king with his Spanish
mother, Italian grandmother and Italian mentor: the great
ecclesiastics who had encouraged the Flamboyant style of the
late Middle Ages; the great nobility who had commissioned the
anti-Classical, non-intellectual Mannerism of the late French
Renaissance; the bourgeoisie who had not hitherto been
considered representative of France in matters of patronage? If
the attitudes of the bourgeoisie were now to be of predominant
significance it was because their power, consolidated through
Richelieu’s policy of reducing the feudal nobility, though
momentarily eclipsed by Mazarin’s promotion of his com-
patriots, was to be the foundation of Colbert's state. Formed
though he may have been in the Italianate court of Mazarin,
Colbert. like Richelieu, saw the importance for French prestige
of French preeminence in art and to him the prime sources of
authority were reason and discipline — qualities he looked for in
vain in the Roman tradition of Bernini. Though it has little to
do with Roman Baroque, it is certainly not insignificant that the
essentially flamboyant, anti-Classical, Rococo began to emerge
during the decline of Louis XIV following the demise of Colbert
and the weakening of ministerial authority under his successors
when the king took a more personal initiative.
142 Opposite left Paris, engraving of the fagade of the Noviciate of the
Jesuits, by Etienne Martellange, 1630
143 Opposite right Paris, Saint Paul-Saint Louis, three projects: above, by
Martellange, 1625; centre, by Derand, 1629; below, as executed. See also
plate 423
Louis XIII and Richelieu
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that under Richelieu — when
French Classicism was brought to maturity in their various
fields by Descartes, Pascal, Corneille, Poussin, Claude Lorrain,
Philippe de Champaigne, Mansart, Lemercier — every impor-
lant private commission came from the bourgeoisie or the new
noblesse de robe to which the most successful members of the
middle class were being promoted.! Hard working and serious,
committed to ordre, raison, mesure — ready to agree with La
Bruyere that ‘entre le bon sens et le bon gout il y a la difference
de la cause a un effet’? — this class provided not only the private
patrons but such men as the financier and administrator Sublet
de Noyers, who — supported if not schooled by his cousins the
Frearts — seems to have acted as Richelieu’s chief adviser on
artistic matters before he became secretary of state for war in
1636 and long before he acquired the dormant office of Surin-
tendant des Batiments in 1638.
In the preface to the Parallele de l'arehiteeture antique et de la
moderne, a seminal work of academic French Classical theory
published in 1650, Freart de Chambray described Sublet, to
whom it was dedicated, as ‘the true author’, and the ‘Maecenas
of the century’. In this role he promoted the completion of the
court of the Louvre and the decoration of the Grande Galerie
linking it with the Tuileries, both as a palace for the king and a
centre for the arts which would rank as the greatest modern
monument in Europe. To this end, especially for the decoration
of the Grande Galerie but possibly even to form an academy, he
recalled Poussin to France, inviting Duquesnoy to accompany
him — a somewhat chauvinistic policy soon expanded, probably
at the instigation of Mazarin, into one of outright rivalry with
Rome involving the attempt to attract leading Italian artists
including Guercino, Cortona and Algardi— if not yet Bernini —
as well.
It is necessary to consider the patronage, private and public,
of Sublet and the Fréarts, for they were involved in the
purification of the French tradition from the excesses of the du
Cerceau period — to which the Flemish were now addicted — and
the protection of that tradition from the licence of the contem-
porary Roman Baroque. In the capacities of artistic adviser to
Richelieu and private patron, respectively, Sublet was associ-
ated with Jacques Lemercier and the Jesuit brother Etienne
Martellange who, at least from the academic point of view of
the author of the Paralléle, were the two leading Classicists to
emerge in France after Salomon de Brosse. Both had been in
Rome during the formative years of the Baroque but neither
was seduced by its licentiousness; on the contrary, searching for
an alternative to the florid sixteenth-century French forms,
especially in ecclesiastical architecture, each went back to post-
Tridentine Roman models and introduced them to France
stripped of any suggestion of Mannerism.
Architecte du Roi soon after his return from Rome in 1614,
ten years later Premier Architecte charged with completing the
Louvre. and Richelieu’s architect, Lemercier was supported if
not promoted by Sublet* and the considerable reputation
which he enjoyed throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries was based on precisely those qualities which the
author of the Paralléle most consistently praises — regularity
and sobriety above all.> Indeed it is necessary to look briefly at
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Lemercier’s work because the related work of Martellange was
seen at the time, and was meant to be seen, as a manifesto of the
ideals of Sublet’s circle, as much anti-Baroque as ant-
Mannerist.
Lemercier's first major ecclesiastical exercise, and his first
important work not constrained by existing building, was the
chapel of the Sorbonne — according to Sauval the only building
commissioned by Richelieu that was regular both inside and
out, demonstrating comprehension of the rules of Classical
architecture. The plan, which dates from 1629, is close to that of
Rosato Rosati’s S. Carlo ai Catinari in Rome and Lemercier’s
recollection of the unusual articulation of S. Carlo’s cupola —
arched windows separated by clustered pilasters — which was
not actually executed until after he left Rome. suggests that he
Louis XIII and Richelieu 107
had been associated with Rosati’s studio.° For the main front
Lemercier adopted the standard Roman form with an upper
storey narrower than the lower and though he retained Rosati’s
spacing of the Order, with less height he was able to reduce the
number of decorative elements, clanfying the composition and
allowing less interference with the horizontals. This first major
French attempt to revise the Roman form of church fagade in
accordance with academic principles has not generally been
enthusiastically received. The spacing of the Order, the size and
shape of the openings and the attempt to add movement by
varying the plasticity of the lower Order — whether considered
as a staid reflection or an academic correction of Maderno’s
Santa Susanna — have usually been criticised and Lemercier
himself took the opportunities given him by the Cardinal at
Richelieu and Rueil to attend to these matters, regularizing and
clarifying still further essentially the same ordonnance.
Lemercier’s greatest success, however. was the most original
feature of his Sorbonne composition — the north facade with its
magnificent portico providing access to the college court.
Treated in the grandest manner. according to Blondel, this
facade was more regular than that of any other sacred monu-
ment in Paris: *... nous ne pouvons trop en recommander
examen a nos Eleves’.
Before Lemercier’s work at the Sorbonne, the regularization
of the Roman form of church fagade had been experimented
with several times by Martellange — notably in projects for Le
Puy in 1605, Avignon in 1617, Vienne in 1623 and Blois in
1624. In the Jesuit Noviciate in Paris, commissioned by Sublet
in 1630, Martellange perfected these experiments after exper-
ence of Lemercier’s work — elevations of the Sorbonne dated
421
142
108 Pare@il France
1630 survive amongst his papers.” Like Lemercier, Martellange
went back to the Roman school of Giacomo della Porta,
flourishing at the turn of the century when Martellange himself
was in Rome. His precise model was S. Maria dei Monti but he
adopted the Doric and Ionic Orders instead of the Corinthian
and Composite, revising the proportions accordingly, and
while retaining all the elements of della Porta’s fagade he
pursued the ideals of clarity and regularity even further than his
Roman or French mentors — subjecting all the details to the
clearly sustained horizontals of the entablatures (like both della
Porta and Lemercier), of the socle upon which the upper Order
rests (like Lemercier) and of the string-courses aligned with the
entablatures of the central openings which bind the outer bays
and consoles to the central section. Martellange expressly
sought an undertaking from the Jesuit authorities that he would
144 Below Chateau of Blois, vault of the staircase in the Orleans Wing by
Francois Mansart, 1635-38
145 Right Chatean of Blois, drawing of a project for reconstruction by
Francois Mansart, 1635. Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale
not be obliged to follow the orders of any Jesuit father but it is
hard to believe that his patrons, Sublet and the Frearts, were
not closely involved with the design — as they themselves
claimed. They were certainly delighted with the finished build-
ing, to which Poussin contributed an altarpiece, and in his
Paralléle Chambray boasts that “cette église est estimee la plus
réeguliére de Paris, et quoy qu'elle ne soit pas chargee de tant
d’ornemens que quelques autres, elle paroist néantmoins fort
belle aux yeux des intelligens tout y estant fait avec une entente
extraordinaire’. Academic critics from Sauval in the seven-
teenth century to Blondel in the eighteenth agree and according
to Chantelou even Bernini considered the Noviciate “unique
piéce achevée qu'il ett vue a Paris’.?°
As a manifesto of academic Classical principles the Noviciate
was aresponse to the design lately adopted by the Jesuits for the
facade of their Maison Professe in Paris, now St Paul-St Louis.
The commission for the church had originally been given to
Martellange and his plans of 1625 incorporated a great niche in
the facade’! which, rather than anticipating High Baroque
developments, recalled the Nicchione of the Vatican Belvedere
—or Collin’s portal to the stables at Fontainebleau. Flanked by
an ordonnance derived from de Brosse’s nearby church of St
Gervais, this great niche might well have appealed to Mar-
tellange as a dramatic accent of less doubtful licence than de
Brosse’s heavy segmental pediment, with its strange recession
reminiscent of the mannered composition of St Etienne-du-
Mont. Similarly the complete reliance on architectural mem-
bers — the Orders themselves and the pedimented doors, win-
dows and niches ~ and the sparing use of sculpture only tn
association with the architectural members, seem to testify to a
rejection of the excesses of the late French Renaissance. Yet
Martellange’s facade, at least as depicted by the foundation
medal, is not without a suggestion of the gaucheness present in
much of his work before his association with the circle of
Sublet.
Apparently for lack of sumptuousness, rather than for any
gaucheness, Martellange’s fagade design was rejected and work
began on the facade early in 1629 to a new design by Pere
Francois Derand. Derand also referred to St Gervais but
instead of the single plane with the entablature breaking
forward over the columns, free-standing Orders and minimal
carved ornament of de Brosse’s composition, Derand broke the
central bay forward, increasing the plasticity of his Order from
half-columns on the side bays to three-quarter ones in the centre
—in the manner of Maderno — and applied ornament liberally —
in the manner of his Flemish contemporaries. Martellange
bitterly criticized this new project: apart from purely practical
considerations he condemned not only the profusion of carved
ornament in Derand’s project but the Roman Baroque con-
ception of movement as well. Though Derand was not sup-
planted this attack was not without its effect and the variation
in the plasticity of the Order was suppressed. But tn attracting
the attention and the support of Sublet and his cousins in this
dispute Martellange had the last word. In his journal on 19
October 1665 Chantelou reported that in connection with St
Paul-St Louis he had told the Jesuits that they had allowed
Derand and his Flemish cronies, whom they took to be oracles
in architecture. to spoil their church by covering its fagade with
‘vilains ornements’. The Jesuits responded that connoisseurs
were rare and it was necessary to please the multitude -
moreover Richelieu had found their church beautiful. Chan-
telou replied that the cardinal had been a very great minister but
had known little about architecture and that the advantage of
consulting connoisseurs was well borne out by the Noviciate
which, they were forced to agree, had received universal
approbation.!
While Sublet and his circle. including Lemercter and Martel-
lange who knew early Baroque Rome, were bent on purifying
the French Classical tradition by rejecting both Mannerist and
Baroque techniques and promoting an academicism based on
the revision of late sixteenth-century Italian forms. Frangois
Mansart. who had never been to Rome, was perfecting the
work of his French predecessors and invigorating the native
tradition by drawing upon much the same sources as those used
by the Roman Baroque masters themselves.'3 In the first decade
of Richelieu’s ministry he had inherited the mantle of Salomon
de Brosse who, rejecting the essentially decorative Mannerism
associated with the circle of the du Cerceau in which he had
been trained, revived the logical and coherent approach to
ordonnance evolved by the mid-sixteenth-century masters,
Lescot and de Orme. Continuing de Brosse’s experiments
under the patronage of members of the noblesse de robe, 1 1635
in his plans for the reconstruction of the Chateau of Blois
commissioned by the king’s brother Gaston d’Orleans. Mans-
art gave the fullest expression to the qualities generally associ-
ated with the French Classical spirit of the seventeenth century
— clarity combined with subtlety. restraint with richness, obedi-
ence to a strict code of rules coupled with flexibility within
them, and concentration by the elimimation of inessentials. Yet
in a way utterly characteristic of Francois Mansart. great
individualist that he was, these plans for Blois also reveal an
interest in forms and techniques which were soon to become
hallmarks of the Roman High Baroque.
The principle of varying the plasticity of the Order in concert
with variations in the plane of the wall, exploited so brilhantly
by Maderno at S. Susanna and thereafter a characteristic
Roman High Baroque way of producing movement ina facade,
was by no means new to France. Lescot and de Orme had seen
Louis XII! and Richeheu 109
in it the key to the solution of the basic French problem of
binding pavillons and corps-de-logis together into a consistent
whole, at once effecting transition from one mass to another in
the interest of unity and expressing distinction between the
masses in the interest of variety — a problem which little
concerned the Italians. with their preference for homogeneous
masses, until they began to experiment with the centralization
of their church facades in the late-sixteenth century. This
approach to ordonnance. further developed by Salomon de
Brosse to ensure the subordination of all the parts in a hier-
archically ordered whole. was fundamental to Frangois Man-
sart’s conception of scale and monumentality. At Blois. where
the site was irregular and the internal requirements more
complex than any faced by de Brosse, Mansart showed extra-
ordinary virtuosity in varying the expression of the strictly
correct Orders to achieve clarity in the definition of the parts
within a completely consistent whole and to provide the energy
which infuses the scheme with vitality. Thus. while Mansart’s
146 Below Paris. Hotel Lambert. begun by Louts Le Vau in 1640,
engraving of a section
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| broctearant baker be ba Waco doA te Prevdenttouambert
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147 Above Hotel Lambert, engraving of the plan of the principal floor
146, 147
110 Part li France
work at Blois might in this respect be compared with contemp-
orary developments in the Roman school of Maderno, its
significance lies more properly in the context of specifically
French developments.
Likewise it is unlikely that direct influence from contemp-
orary Rome would explain the appearance in Mansart’s Blois
project of other forms and devices popular with Baroque
masters: the curved facades, the variety of interior shapes, the
vertical perspectives, the dramatic vistas. Quadrants at the head
of a court were familiar enough in France and already present
in Mansart’s earlier Hotel de l’Aubespine and Chateau de
Berny, but the semi-oval external walls of Blois were possibly
suggested by the work of Giovanni Battista Montano whose
influence on Mansart was already apparent in the altar of St
Martin-des-Champs. The oval chapel was closely related to
Mansart’s earlier plans for the church of the Visitation in Paris
which itself derives from sixteenth-century French sources and
Montano. The entrance pavilion with its cut-off dome sur-
mounted by a drum and a second dome with the lantern was
based on earlier experiments at the Visitation involving the
contrast of illuminated and shaded forms, but the principal
staircase, in which the quite dramatic hghting from diagonally
placed sources concealed from the main flight by the first floor
gallery. has no precise precedent. The great interior enfilades
derive from the French tradition, but Mansart showed his
originality with the Jandscaping, an exercise in urbanism on a
monumental scale anticipated only at Balleroy, in which the
chateau itself was to operate as the climax of converging open
vistas in the manner hardly more spectacularly developed later
by Le Notre.
Many of the same techniques appealed to the bold imagin-
ation of Mansart’s younger rival, Louis Le Vau, most of whose
major works belong to the period of Mazarin. Evolving the
plan of the Parisian /6fe/ side by side with Mansart in the last
seven or eight years of Richelieu, Le Vau's combination of
convenient distribution with vigorous forms can best be seen in
the dre! he built from 1640 onwards at the end of the Ile St
Louis for the ostentatious financier J. B. Lambert: the curved
court fagade — the incoherent, essentially decorative ordonnance
which has more to do with “du Cerceau’ Mannertsm than
with mature Classicism — the variety of interior spaces including
oval vestibules, and above all the theatrical staircase contrived
to double back on itself to produce the maximum effect on the
visitor ascending through narrow dark flights on to a wide,
bright landing commanding an extensive vista through vesti-
bules and gallery up the river beyond. And it was his capacity
for good theatre which was to be the making of Louts Le Vauin
the period of Mazarin, the opening of which coincided with the
completion of the Hotel Lambert.
148 Opposite Vaux-le-Vicomle, chateau by Le Vau, gardens by André Le
Noire, 1657-61
Mazarin and the
minority of Louis XIV
With Sublet’s discomfiture in 1643 after the deaths of Richelieu
and Louis X11, and the accession to power of Mazarin — the
Italian adventurer, protégé of those scions of the Roman
Baroque era the Colonna, the Sacchetti and the Barberini,
agent of Richelieu, confidant of the queen—the pattern of
patronage radically altered.!* Mazarin replaced Sublet with the
ineffectual Le Camus and he himself set the style for the next
twenty years. Lemercier went on working at the Louvre as
Premier Architecte but was soon eclipsed by the more versatile,
less fastidious Le Vau in the service of Mazarin’s richest and
most ostentatious ministers. Poussin had already returned to
Rome. Chambray accompanied his cousin into exile and
devoted himself to the task of setting down the ideals of his
administration in his Paralléle which, significantly enough, was
published in 1650 at the moment during the Fronde when
Mazarin’s political demise seemed imminent.
Mazarin, as already suggested, may we)]l have been respons-
ible for the broadening of Sublet’s policy of cultural chauvinism
by including the leading Italian masters in the royal invitation
to France. In 1644 he took this up again and tried to persuade
Bernini to come to Paris to transform the Hote] Tubeuf, which
he had Jeased at the end of the previous year, into a palazzo. He
failed. Overlooking the Premier Architecte, he turned to
Francois Mansart whose reputation as a transformer of town
houses in particular was hardly yet rivalled, even by that of Le
Vau, and who was far the most imaginative —1f not Baroque —
of any of the then established architects. Their relationship,
complicated by Mansart’s attitude to his patron during the
Fronde, proved to be unhappy and Mansart was never again
employed by the cardinal but he does seem to have been
responsible for the principal extensions to the Hotel Tubeuf
including superimposed galleries to the west of the garden.
Early in 1646 Giovanni Francesco Romanelli — pupil of Pietro
da Cortona and protégé of Francesco Barberini who had just
fled from the persecution of Innocent X to Mazarin’s protection
in Paris — was engaged to decorate the upper gallery. In doing so
he introduced Paris to the approach of his master, then working
on the Pitti Palace in Florence, based on a combination of
luxuriant white and gold stucco work with simulated easel
pictures and dominated by great illusionist scenes of heaven.
Ceilings incorporating illusionist panels in steep perspective
were not new to France — Primaticcio and Niccolo dell’ Abbate
had introduced such panels, varied in shape and richly framed,
for the Galerie d’Ulysse at Fontainebleau and they had de-
corated the ceiling of the chapel of the Hétel de Guise with a
single unified composition of semi-illusionism. The second
school of Fontainebleau had largely ignored this approach and
it was not until the later years of Richelieu that Simon Vouet
took it up on his return to Paris, further developing it in the
light of his experience of later sixteenth-century and contem-
porary interiors in Italy. Amongst his earliest works of this type
was the gallery of the Chateau de Chilly, about 163], where the
scheme as a whole followed the precedent set by Primaticcio
and Niccolo.'5 However the overall effect of the heavy network
of stucco ornament must have been closer to Veronese arid the
principal frescoes, depicting the rising of the sun and of the
moon, were indebted to the great contemporary treatments of
similar subjects by Guido Reni and Guercino — Guido for
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individual motifs, Guercino for the conception di sotto in si.
Vouet’s most important opportunities were provided in the
late 1630s and the 1640s by the queen mother, in works now
vanished, and by the Chancellor Seguier who, protégé of
Richelieu and one of the chief paladins of Mazarin’s era, was
shortly to be the promoter of Le Brun. The mixture as at Chilly
but with more of Veronese in the di sotto in st frescoes 1s
apparent in Seguier’s library and gallery, which Vouet decor-
ated in the 1640s, but for the chapel, 1638, he produced a single,
unified scheme of consistent illusionism inspired by the Guise
chapel.'° Whereas the latter was dominated by a continuous
relief-like frieze of figures, however, Vouet disposed his figures
freely behind a balustrade which suggested the termination of
the walls and the opening up of the room to the sky. This
initiative was not to be followed up in France until Le Brun
adopted it for the Salons de la Guerre and de la Paix at
Versailles in the 1680s. Contrary to it was the ceiling of the
Gallery of the Hotel de la Vrilliere which Francois Perrier
149 Opposite above Versailles, garden front built by Le Vau, 1669, enlarged
and altered by J. H. Mansart, from 1678
150 Opposite below Versailles, Galerie des Glaces by J. H. Mansart and
Charles Le Brun, begun 1678
151 Right Paris, Palais Mazarin, detail from the vaull decoration of the
Galerie Mazarine (added by Mansart to the Hotel Tubeuf) by Francesco
Romanelli, 1646-47
152 Below Paris, Louvre, vaulf decoration by Romanelli in the Salle des
Saisons, 1655-57
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2 98.8 MALY TLE
Mazarin and the minority of Louis XIV 113
painted in the late 1640s under the direction of Frangois
Mansart. Here the semi-illusionist scenes were viewed through
a painted framework of simulated architecture and stucco
recalling in many of its details Mansart’s treatment of the stone
vault above his staircase at Blois.
It is tempting to see Mazarin’s choice of Romanelli for the
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144
114) Part 1 “France
decoration of Mansart’s gallery at the Hotel Tubeuf as a
rejection of the work of Mansart and Perrier in favour of the
latest Italian developments and this was doubtless not un-
connected with the rift between Mansart and Mazarin. The
long narrow vault there was hardly suited to a single unified
exercise based upon a fixed viewpoint perspective or to the
highly plastic type of stucco work developed by his master. so
Romanelli divided it into panels and treated them as easel
pictures with relatively simple, interlocking frames, except for
the central panel which shows the ‘Fall of the Giants’ in clumsy
perspective. This apparently appealed to the queen mother for
though Romanelli returned to [taly on the completion of his
work at the Hotel Tubeuf in 1648 he was called back in 1655 to
decorate her new summer apartment at the Louvre. If the
nature of the field in the Galerie Mazarine seems to have
suggested a modification of the Baroque character of Cortona’s
work, the smaller, more compact rooms of the queen mother’s
apartment at the Louvre presented no such problem of unity.
With the possibility of a fixed viewpoint in the centre of such
rooms and with the lines of the structure as a framework,
Romanelli could choose either illusionist or non-illusionist
scenes, or both, and indulge in much more of Cortona’s rich
variety of forms and contours.
In the years before the Fronde— when the cardinal was active
as a patron of the High Baroque even in Rome, buying the
Palazzo Bentivoglio and commissioning the fagade of SS.
Vincenzo e Anastasio from Martino Longhi the younger —
Romanelli’s was not the only Italian art of any significance to
dazzle the French. A constant stream of Italian works of all
kinds flowed into the court of Mazarin, who was now an
insatiable collector. A devotee of the stage since his earliest
youth with the Jesuits and later the Barberini, Mazarin pro-
moted Italian operas and ballets at court, and the duke of
Parma, at the queen’s behest, sent Giacomo Torelli, one of the
leading stage designers of the day, to mount them.'’ The
extravagant spectacle of his productions — dramatically fit,
using the richest materials, relying on the fusion of the arts for
their sumptuous vistas and fantastic feigned architectural]
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settings — was not only to be reflected in the great triumphs,
court fétes and pompes funebres throughout the reign but
informed the taste of the young king: the first major result was
the fairy-tale chateau —‘Palais d Armide’ ~ which emerged from
the king’s earliest embellishments at Versailles, with Le Notre’s
gardens as much the setting for his spectacular féres as were Le
Brun’s interiors the setting for his court; Marly was to be
another. In the short term, however, the ostentation of these
alien court entertainments did a great deal to increase the
bitterness felt by the bourgeoisie over the employment of
Italians by Mazarin’s regime, and the disaffection of the very
class promoted by Richelieu to the disadvantage of the noblesse
d‘épée was seen by the latter as the opportunity to reassert itself.
The outbreak of the Fronde in 1648 marked a devastating
reversal of Mazarin’s fortunes and temporarily terminated the
development of French Baroque: its most brillant phase
opened with his final triumph in 1653.
Meanwhile the fortunes of Frangois Mansart too had
suffered a sharp setback when in 1646 the queen mother
replaced him with Lemercier on the commission for the Val-de-
Grace — which involved not only a major church but a vast
palace in whose plan he took up again his experiments with the
153 Left Versailles, engraving of the Cour de Marbre built by Philibert Le
Roy and Louis Le Vau, [624-69
154 Above Fresnes by Frangois Mansart, 1644-50, section of the Chapel
155 Opposite Paris, Val-de-Grace, church by Frangois Mansarl and
Jacques Lemercier, begun 1645
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development of vistas through interrelated spaces of richly
varied forms. After the Fronde he had to rely on the patronage
of the more fastidious members of the noblesse de robe. One
such was the secretary of state, Henri de Guénéegaud, who gave
him the opportunity at Fresnes to carry out a reduced version of
his scheme for the church of the Val-de-Grace. The elaboration
of the theme of the assumption of the Virgin, to which the
chapel was dedicated, provided a startling anticipation of that
dramatic extension through the architectural space of the
movement of figures represented in painting and sculpture,
which was to be so brilliantly exploited in Bernini’s later
churches: at Fresnes statues of the apostles were arranged in
expressive postures on either side of the empty tomb on the
main altar, looking up to a painting of the Virgin ascending in
the canopy over the altar, and to God the Father waiting to
receive her in the main dome. :
Perhaps the most fastidious of all Mansart’s patrons was
Rene de Longueil who in 1642 gave him the opportunity at
Maisons to build and rebuild in his incessant quest for per-
fection. The Chateau is widely considered the principal master-
piece of French Classical architecture and in the same way as
the architect of the Parthenon envigorated the rigorous system
within which he worked by cross-fertilizing it with the Ionic,
156 Above Antoine Le Pautre’s design for a chateau. engraving of a general
view, 1652
157 Left Antotne Le Pautre’s design for a chateau, engraving of a plan of
the ground and first floors, 1652
158 Below Maisons by Francois Mansart, 1642-46, frontispiece of entrance
front of the Chaleau
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Francois Mansart envigorated the rigorous system of his own
time by the restrained use of such Baroque devices as playful
sculpture, the subtle variation of the form of the Order in
response to the complex projection and recession of planes to
produce movement in the facades. and curved fa¢ades
contrasted in plan with curved interiors. And the Chateau was
the culmination of a vast landscaping exercise dominated by
extended open vistas across the fields and the forecourts, past
the communs whose Orders were proportioned to enhance the
apparent size of the Chateau, and beyond through the terraces
patterned to reflect the symmetry and order of the building
self,
Mazarin and the minority of Louis XIV 117
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159 Top Le Raincy by Louis Le Vau, engraving of the general view,
started before 1645
160 Left Paris, Hotel de Beauvais by Antoine Le Pautre, engraving of the
plan of the first floor, 1652-55
161 Above Le Raincy, engraving of the plan of the ground floor by Louis
Le Vau, before 1645
Meanwhile, during the Fronde, while Chambray saw his
chance to publish Sublet’s principles in 1650. Antoine Le Pautre
looked for a different outcome to the cardinal’s difficulties and
dedicated his Desseins de plusieurs Palais to Mazarin in 1652.
Le Pautre had subscribed to the ideas of the author of the
Parallele in his first important work, the austere chapel of Port-
Royal, 1646, with its fagade recalling the north portico of
Lemercier’s Sorbonne chapel. His ‘plusieurs Palais’, on the
other hand, show no restraint whatsoever: vast and crushing in
scale and weight, powerful in massing, energetic in sculptural
detail, drawing the maximum effect from the contrast of
concave and convex forms, rich in internal vistas, there 1s
nevertheless a sense of self-conscious Mannerism about most of
the plans and in some designs (e.g. the second project), there isa
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162 Above Vaux-le-Vicomle by Louis Le Vau. salon
163 Left Vaux-le-Vicomte, Chambre du Roi by Louis Le Vau and Charles
Le Brun
Mannerist tension between the lucid Palladian plan and the
bombastic motifs of the elevation.1® The only analogy for this
sort of thing in France was the work of Louis Le Vau - though,
as we shall see, he was unable to handle disparate elements as
convincingly as Le Pautre and one has to look to Vanbrugh as
Le Pautre’s worthiest disciple. The only French artist to share
his enthusiasm for atlantes was the Provengal Pierre Puget. A
pupil of Pietro da Cortona, after assisting at the Pitti from
1640-43 he spent much time in Toulon where the portal he
applied to the Hotel de Ville in 1656 was supported by powerful
figures freer in their modelling and more fluid in their com-
position than anything yet seen in Paris.
If his book did not succeed in attracting the patronage of
Mazarin to its author, a prominent member of the queen
mother’s circle, Catherine de Beauvais, had from Le Pautre
perhaps the most persuasively Baroque /éte/ ever built in Paris.
Its bizarre distribution was in fact dictated by a wildly irregular
422
59. 161
site, and the curved facades of the court were actually suggested
by existing foundations. But if the boldness of Le Pautre’s
response to the challenge is worthy of Borromini, the virtuosity
of his solution to the problem of fitting individually sym-
metrical rooms into the fabric is perhaps more reminiscent of
Vignola at Caprarola or the Villa Giulia. Like his contem-
porary altar at St Laurent — with its concave side bays — and
his later fagade to the Jesuit church at Lyons — with its Orders
increasing in plasticity in response to the projection of its
central bay — the facade of the Hotel de Beauvais on the rue St
Antoine — with the contrasting curves of its entrance portal in
particular — acknowledges the influence of contemporary
Rome. From the balcony above the portal, appropriately
enough, Anne of Austria watched the theatrical entry of her son
and daughter-in-law into Paris along a processional way
punctuated with extravagantly sumptuous triumphal arches —
of which Le Brun’s were the finest — the first of the great series of
spectacles translated for the king from the stage of Torelli to the
streets of his capital and the terraces of his gardens.
On Mazarin’s return after the Fronde, Mansart did not
regain official favour. Having been granted the government of
the Chateau of Vincennes and seeking an architect to transform
it in 1654, Mazarin chose Le Vau from a short lst — which
included Mansart and Le Muet — presented to him by his
secretary Colbert.1? The colossal Order of Le Vau’s twin
rectangular blocks is Baroque in scale and weight but hardly
more Baroque in practice than it had been in the hands of
Bullant in the late sixteenth century and his portal is a solid
Classical exercise. On the death of Lemercier in 1654, Le Vau
became Premier Architecte charged with the completion of
the Louvre. Pressing on from 1660 with the continuation of the
south and north wings, begun under Lescot and Lemercier —
adding a weighty frontispiece of colossal Corinthian columns,
borrowed from Bullant at Ecouen, as the south portal — he
remodelled the Petite Galerie after a fire in 1661 and began
planning the important wing which was to close the com-
position on the east.
Besides these great royal works, it was for Mazarin and the
most powerful members of his regime that Le Vau produced his
most spectacular works. For the Secretary of State Hugues
de Lionne, he built one of the most important /éte/s in Paris at
the end of the period — with a theatrical staircase approached on
the long axis of the vestibule through a triple arched opening.
Above all he built the chateaux of Le Raincy and Vaux-le-
Vicomte and transformed Meudon for the Intendant des Fi-
nances Bordier and the joint Surintendants des Finances Fou-
quet and Servien respectively. Of these the first, built just before
the Fronde, was Le Raincy. Here he demonstrated his skill in
internal distribution to meet new standards of comfort and
convenience and made his first experiments with Baroque
massing by introducing a great oval central pavilion which
dominated the composition and projected the main reception
rooms into the garden but disrupted the plan and interrupted
164 Top right Paris, Collége des Qualre Nations (now Institut de France),
begun [662 by Louis Le Vau
165 Centre right Paris, Hélel Lambert, Galerie d’Hercule by Louis Le Vau
and Charles Le Brun, begun c. 1650
166 Right Paris, Louvre, Galerie d'Apollon by Louis Le Vau and Charles
Le Brun, 1661-63
Mazarin and the minority of Louis XIV
119
148
424
164
163
120 Part Il France
the inconsistently articulated fagades on both sides with its
curved projections. At Meudon, after the Fronde, he modified
this device, curving only the corners of the pavilion on either
side of a flat frontispiece which was bound to the corps-de-logis
by continuous superimposed Orders. At Vaux (1657) — his most
brilliant plan from the point of view of convenience — the central
pavilion containing the oval salon projects only on the garden
fagade but with its curvature emphasized by a huge dome and
again with no consistent use of the Orders it is hardly less
disruptive than at Le Raincy. On the court side concave walls
provide a one-storey link across the corps-de-logis between the
central and intermediate pavilions on the doubled sides.
Influential as the approach to planning developed in these
works was to be, their composition reveals Le Vau’s failure to
understand Baroque techniques, in particular to control the
movement introduced into facades by curvature or to produce
it by varying the plasticity of a consistent Order; indeed given
his vigorous approach to massing his free use of the Orders —
essentially decorative in the tradition associated with the du
Cerceau rather than architectonic — actually inhibited the
production of the dramatic climax which was the principal aim
of Baroque composition. In his work for the executors of
Mazarin’s will, the College des Quatre Nations, begun in 1662,
this is particularly apparent. The domed church flanked with
quadrant wings, combining motifs from Pietro da Cortona and
Borromini, presents a dramatically effective ensemble but the
interpolation of superimposed Orders on the quadrants be-
tween the colossal Order of the sides and the centre again
disrupts the unity of the composition and prevents that power-
ful centralizing effect achieved in the Roman models.
Le Vau’s project for the completion of the Louvre — under
execution in 1663 — was Baroque in scale and, part of a truly
monumental scheme embracing the College des Quatre Nat-
1ons, seems to demonstrate a greater understanding of the need
for a consistent articulation than any of Le Vau’s earlier works:
the Order of colossal Corinthian columns applied rather awk-
wardly as the frontispiece of his extended south wing in 1660,
and reflected on the other side of the river by the Collége, was
spread over the entire eastern fagade, including the side pav-
ilions and the vigorously projecting central pavilion containing
yet another vast oval salon. As Le Vau had realized twenty
years earlier at the Hotel Lambert the strength of a colossal
Order was required when a building was to be viewed from afar
but still there was no attempt to vary its plasticity, to harness
the power of the massing, express the distinction between the
corps-de-logis and the pavilions and to provide the sort of
variety within an overall unity of which Frangois Mansart was
such a master.
At Vaux, of course, the building — with all its faults — is by no
means the whole story. Set in Le Notre’s splendid garden —
based on the principle, already developed by Frangois Mansart
at Blois and Maisons, of placing the chateau at the climax of the
extended open vistas to which vast tracts of the landscape were
subjected — and decorated with Le Brun’s sumptuous ceilings of
painting and stucco above tiers of richly framed panels of
painted arabesques, it was the most startling ensemble of the
day.
Le Vau had employed Romanelli at Le Raincy but he first
worked with Le Brun about 1650-shortly after Le Brun’s
return from Rome-—on the Hotel Lambert gallery.2° There,
faced like Romanelli in the Galerie Mazarine with a long, low,
narrow vault, Le Brun divided the field with painted architect-
ure — resting on the continuous cornice of the real Order
framing the entrance — and, more imaginatively than Roman-
elli, he simulated the sky at the ends as the scene for suitable
mythologies and suspended feigned tapestries as velaria — like
Raphael at the Farnesina — across the central sections. At Vaux,
on the other hand — after Romanelli had confirmed Cortona’s
approach in the popularity of the court with his work for the
queen mother — Le Brun drew upon his first-hand experience of
the great rooms at the Pitti. Above similar rich white and gold
stucco coves dominated by winged non-illusionist figures of
Fame supporting trompe-l'oeil medallions and panels whose
frames curl into volutes to ease the transition from wall to cove,
he opened illusionist scenes like Cortona — and Romanelli.
Exuberant as it was and Baroque in the combination of the arts,
Cortona’s work at the Pitti carefully observed the inviolability
of the frames and, establishing decisive contrasts in the white
and gold stucco work, ensured that each element of the design
was self-contained. It was on precisely this principle, and with
‘decreasing importance placed on the profusion of stucco motifs
and illusionism, that Le Brun forged for Louis XIV the style of
decoration which, first expressed on a royal scale in 1663 on the
vault of the Galerie d’Apollon at the Louvre — where height and
breadth permitted a much more stunning variety of shapes and
depth of relief than in the Galerie Mazarine or that in the Hotel
Lambert — was to reach its apotheosis in the Grands
Appartements at Versailles — ‘Baroque tamed by the French
Classical spirit’.
The influence of Mazarin’s taste survived his death. It is
apparent not only in the designs approved by Colbert for the
College des Quatre Nations but also in the choice of Guarino
Guarini as the architect for the other building provided for in
the cardinal’s will, Sainte Anne-la-Royale. This was to be the
church of the Theatine order, which Mazarin had introduced to
France in 1644, and had it been completed it would have been
the only unequivocally Baroque building in Paris. For this very
reason it fell victim, before it was far advanced, to the change of
artistic climate following Bernini's unsuccessful visit to France.
This in fact followed a severe reversal of Le Vau’s own fortunes;
indeed, the chief legactes of the Baroque era of Mazarin —
briskly terminated not by the king’s assumption of personal
power but by the dismissal and arrest of Fouquet organized by
Colbert after the great fére which launched Vaux — were the
interiors of Le Brun and the gardens of Le Nétre. For while Le
Brun and Le Notre brought to the era of Colbert precisely that
combination of sumptuousness and order which the prestige
and power of the new monarchy required, Le Vau emerged
_ from his discomfiture only by changing his style.
167 Opposite Versailles, Salon de la Guerre by J. H. Mansart, Coysevox
and Le Brun, begun 1678
168 Overleaf Versailles, Chapel by J. H. Mansart with paintings by
Antoine Coypel and Charles de la Fosse, 1688-1710
166
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Colbert and the maturity
of Louis XIV
On | January 1664 Mazarin’s protégé, Colbert, officially
assumed the responsibilities of Surintendant des Batiments.?!
He was the supreme example of the type of statesman to emerge
in France through the policy of promoting the bourgeoisie
under Richelieu and he began to fill the role which Sublet de
Noyers had cast for himself — with the Perraults, of similarly
respectable bourgeois origins, in place of the Frearts. Unlike
Sublet, however, his conception of “bon gout’ was flexible and
responded to extra-artistic considerations. As one contem-
porary observer put it ‘ce netait pas particulicrement qu'il
aimait les artistes et les savants: c’était comme homme d’Etat
qu'il les protegeait, parce qu'il avait reconnu que les Beaux-Arts
sont seuls capables de former et d'immortaliser les grands
Empires’.2? Thus it is not necessary to see in his first important
act as Surintendant — the cessation of work on Le Vau’s project
for the Louvre and the submission of that project to the
criticism of Le Vau’s colleagues in both France and Italy** — any
hostility to the Baroque tendencies in the work of the architect
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Colbert and the maturity of Louis XIV |
whose career he had hitherto done much to further ~ most
recently in retaining him for the College des Quatre Nations.
Rather it was dictated by considerations of prestige and power.
The prestige of the Louvre as the principal residence of the
greatest king in Europe demanded the greatest architectural
talent, and Colbert hoped to commission Frangots Mansart,
who had been working on the Louvre for some time; unable to
hold Mansart to a specific project, however, he turned to the
Italians and attracting Bernini, widely considered the greatest
master in Europe, gained the added advantage of despoiling the
pope. Hardly less important was Colbert's determination to
destroy the power which the Premier Architecte had gained at
the expense of the Surintendant des Batiments under his weak
predecessor, in the interest of centralized control over all the
169 Below Francois Mansart, drawing of a project for the east wing of the
Louvre, ¢. 1664 Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale
170 Bottom left Frangois Mansart, plan of a project for the east wing of
the Louvre, 1664 Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale
171 Bottom right Pietro da Cortona, drawing of a project for the west wing
of the Louvre, 1664 Paris, Musée du Louvre
organs of the state — art and artists included. The manoeuvre
had considerable artistic consequences however, for from it
emerged the hybrid style of the new Louvre and Versailles —
Baroque in scale, richness of materials, colour, but regulated in
accordance with academic Classical principles, even when
relying on the fusion of the arts in interiors — which at once
satisfied the king’s taste for display, responded to Colbert's
169, 170
ideal of order, and expressed their common conception of the
grandeur of the French monarchy.
From the surviving proposals of Le Vau’'s colleagues for the
east front of the Louvre three different approaches emerge: Le
Vau's scheme with a colossal Order rising from the ground was
favoured by Francois Mansart and Pierre Cottard; Lescot’s
scheme of the interior court with its superimposed Orders, first
translated to the extertor by Lemercier ten years earlier, was
favoured by Jean Marot: acolonnade supported by a rusticated
basement was favoured by Léonor Houdin in a strictly Classi-
cal, indeed Bramantesque, interpretation of the traditional
French chateau entrance screen dating from 1661, and by
Claude Perrault, brother of Colbert's chief commis Charles, ina
lost project which later testimony claims anticipated the sol-
ution ultimately adopted. Zé
In an incredibly complex series of drawings — demonstrat-
ing precisely that inability, or unwillingness, to bring the creative
process to a practical conclusion which made it impossible for
Colbert to retain him— Francois Mansart brought his own style
to its apogee.”* It is not possible, considering them, any longer
to speak of Mansart as merely envigorating French Classicism:
his ideas for the Louvre are quite distinctly Baroque in their
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172 Top Bernini, drawing of the first project for the east wing of the
Louvre, 1664 (Sir Anthony Blunt Collection)
173 Above Bernini, engraving of the final project for the east front of the
Louvre, 1665
174 Opposite Paris, Val-de-Grace, baldacchino by Gabriel Le Duc, 1664
scale, in the vigour of their massing, in the movement explicit in
curved facades and Orders of varied plasticity, in their planning
for dramatic vistas through richly diversified room shapes, not
only along the principal axes at right angles to one another but
along the diagonals as well. Yet there is no specifically Roman
importation in all this torrent of invention: on the contrary the
colossal Corinthian Order was doubtless suggested by Le Vau’s
existing work, and the massing of differentiated blocks, the
ordonnance based on the principle of progression in plasticity,
the planning about enfi/ades, were all the essential characteris-
tics of the French tradition which Mansart had inherited from
de Brosse, de Orme, and Lescot and which he had begun to
develop thirty years before he turned his attention to the
Louvre.
According to Charles Perrault Colbert admired his brother’s
126 ParteTl France
colonnade, but it did not conform to the existing work — one of
Colbert's chief concerns — and of those French architects whose
designs did so conform none was considered worthy. At first Le
Vau’s projects were sent to Italy for criticism but then Colbert
asked the Italians for original designs: Bernini, Cortona,
Rainaldi and the otherwise unknown Candiani responded.
Colbert wanted as much of the existing building as possible to
be kept, and Cortona and Rainaldi clearly tried to work in what
they believed to be the French royal idiom. Rainaldi produced a
bizarre composition of pavilions and corps-de-logis of exag-
gerated verticality with a second Order superimposed over the
already colossal Corinthian suggested by Le Vau and kiosks
bearing vast crowns further superimposed on the pavilions. In
several alternative projects Cortona also wrestled un-
successfully with the alien approach to massing in terms of
pavilions and corps-de-logis and in one case also strove for
verticality by superimposing a second Order over one of
colossal Corinthian pilasters. However in his design for
the west front, with its concave and convex segments of
wall, though retaining a disproportionate central pavilion
which seems based on Le Vau's, he reverted to the Roman type
of palazzo facade developed after Bramante by Sangallo and
Michelangelo with its Order raised on a rusticated basement to
embrace two storeys below a concealed roof. Bernini on the
other hand, though keeping all the existing work, made no
concession to its style beyond the adoption of a colossal
Corinthian Order. The great central oval pavilion in his first
scheme, containing a vast salon, was doubtless suggested by Le
Vau but in setting it off against concave wings he used one of the
most characteristic techniques of the Roman High Baroque
and his composition here seems to reflect the plate of the so-
called Temple of Honour and Virtue in Jacopo Laurt’s Anti-
quae urbis splendor. Indeed Baroque architects like Bernini,
gcnerally interested in the plans and forms of ancient buildings
rather than their details, were inspired as much by fantastic
reconstructions, like those of Montano (or Lauri), as by the
actual remains. Moreover Bernini apparently sought to appeal
to French taste by referring to the Venetian School — which his
comments to his French guide, Chantelou, later indicate he
despised: he combined the loggias of Sansovino’s Library with
the clustered pilasters and half columns of his colossal Order in
a scheme which otherwise suggests Michelangelo's Palazzo der
Conservator1.
Whether or not one takes Colbert’s praise of Bernini's
scheme — ‘superbe et magnifique...” — at its face value, his
criticisms were concerned with practical considerations of
climate, convenience, comfort and security — the darkness of the
great central salon, the impracticability of flat roofs in Paris, the
concealment which would-be assassins might find amongst the
arcades — and betray no overt objections to Bernini's style.
However, he did find the crowned oval extraordinary, and
perhaps even deformed, and he did require that the king's
palace should be, and should appear to be, overwhelmingly
strong. For that, he stressed, it was not necessary to construct a
fortress but simply to ensure that the entries could not easily be
approached and that the structure ‘imprime le respect dans
lesprit des peuples et leur laisse quelque impression de sa
formel.2>
Angry though he was, Bernini responded with an enlarged
second project of three floors, the upper two articulated with a
colossal Order resting on a rusticated basement — as in Michel-
angelo’s Palazzo dei Senator! — in which the oval central
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pavilion is suppressed in favour of a great curved central block
concentric with the rest of the facade, offering arcaded galleries
only on the upper two floors. Though this too was open to
practical criticism it appealed to the king, and Bernini was
invited to Paris to sort out the difficulties on the spot. Given
a quasi-royal progress through France and received by
Chantelou near Paris he spent the summer and early autumn of
1665 transforming this second project into the definitive one.
The ordonnance and basic divisions of the three-storey fagade
remained but with the curves and the external loggias removed
this certainly satisfied Colbert's requirement of apparent
strength. Colbert had more difficulty however in concentrating
Bernini's attention on the internal requirements of the palace
and little success at all in persuading him to renounce the
extravagance of refacing the existing buildings. Though
contrary to French tradition the scheme was adopted and
Bernini was pressed to remain 1n France to execute it, despite the
fact that with his arrogance and rudeness he disparaged his
French colleagues, openly insulted Charles Perrault and
exasperated Colbert himself — for he retained the king's
admiration.
After the laying of the foundation stone on 17 October 1665
and Bernini's departure, work on the foundations proceeded
slowly and over the next year the French opposition mobilized
itself. Charles Perrault took every opportunity to play upon
Colbert’s own misgivings about the cost and impracticability of
Bernini's project and though both Le Vau and Mansart were
asked for new projects Colbert, wishing to retain the king’s
commitment to his Paris residence, apparently felt it unwise
to counteract his master’s enthusiasm for Bernini’s scheme. In
April 1667, however, preoccupied with the augmentation of
Versailles the king was finally persuaded to abandon Bernini's
plans, and a commission composed of Le Vau, Le Brun and
_ Claude Perrault was set up to complete the Louvre. A year later
_ Colbert himself explained to Chantelou that Bernint’s project,
‘quoique beau et noble’, was so ill-conceived in so far as the
comfort of the king was concerned that after the expense of 10
million divres on it His Majesty would be as cramped as ever; he,
Colbert, had insisted that the king’s apartment could properly
be sited only in the south wing, where it was, ‘mais que le
Cavalier navait point entre la-dedans, et ne voulait faire les
choses qu’a sa fantaisie’.*°
Apart from the foundations for his Louvre scheme, the only
tangible result of Bernini's visit was the splendid bust of the
king which he carved while in Paris — even the equestrian statue
ordered at that time was out of fashion when it ultimately
reached Versailles in !685. Yet his work was certainly not
without influence. Before and after his visit various church
fittings throughout France were modelled on his baldacchino of
St Peter’s. The most notable, perhaps, is the high altar of the
Val-de-Grace designed by Le Duc in 1664. When the drawings
for it were shown to Bernini in Paris his reaction was one of
disparagement but his revisions were not followed. Of more
fundamental importance, however, were his Louvre projects
themselves. If the third project for the east front, which was
engraved, is submitted to the criticism spelt out in the mid-
eighteenth century by J. F. Blondel the result is very close to the
scheme actually adopted for the south front and its expression
in terms of the colonnade of the east front.*” Thus the executed
projects for the Louvre may be seen as academic Classical
revisions of Bernint's Roman Baroque composition and the
Louvre facades, together with the garden facade of Versailles —
173
3]
174
149
the design for which must be viewed in the light of developments
at the Louvre — provided four generations of royal academictans
with their principal models for monumental architecture.
According to the register of the deliberations of Colbert's
commission, kept by Charles Perrault, it was Colbert's order
that Le Vau, Le Brun and Claude Perrault should work on the
project in common so that none of them could claim the
authorship to the prejudice of the others. However, unable to
agree on a single design the commission submitted two ‘dont
l'un etoit orné d’un Ordre de colonnes formant un perystile ou
galerie au-dessus du premier étage et l'autre etoit plus simple et
plus uni sans Ordre de colonnes’** According to Charles
Perrault the division was between his brother on the one hand
and Le Vau and Le Brun on the other. Consistently referring to
the scheme with the colonnade as his brother's, he reported that
Le Vau was responsible for the one without Orders — which,
unlike the colonnade. accorded with the existing south wing —
and the surviving drawings include a version of 1t generally
attributed to Le Brun. Perrault also relates that Colbert pre-
ferred the scheme without Orders — indeed. it had been Col-
bert’s persistent concern that the new work should accord with
the old — but the king chose the colonnade scheme on 13 May
1667.27
At first it was intended that the new east wing should be
joined to the north and south wings as planned by Le Vau but in
June 1668 the project was revised to provide for the doubling of
the south wing so that the king. the queen. the royal family and
their attendants could be accommodated in the most agreeable
part of the chateau. The revised project was criticised,
presumably by Charles Perrault whose job it was as comunis of
the Surintendunt des Batiments to assess projects. and defended
by Francois Le Vau, Louis” brother who had long worked for
Colbert and who had been called upon to review projects of the
Premier Architecte at least twice before: their comments
provide the key to the transformation of the Baroque schemes
175 Paris, Louvre, east front (Colonnade) by Claude Perrault, Louis Le
Vau and Charles Le Brun, 1667—70
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Colbert and the maturity of Louis XIV 127
for the Louvre into models of academic French Classicism.°*°
Francois Le Vau's principal aim was to demonstrate that the
advantages to be gained by doubling the south wing — ‘la
commodité ... la beauté et la bienseance’ (““comfort, beauty
and propriety”) — would be worth the expense of time and
money involved. To provide all the accommodation needed by
the royal family and their attendants in the south wing, Lescot’s
attic would be replaced with one great storey or two small ones
above that of the king. giving the building a hetght pro-
portioned not only to its length but to its usage: the now
necessarily colossal Order would be applied both to the east and
the south fronts. Charles Perrault condemned in particular the
placing of an obviously habitable storey above that of the king,
as contrary to bienséance, and the use of a colossal Order, cut by
the floor it should have been supporting, as irrational. Frangois
Le Vau replied that bienséance equally required a second storey
for the Enfants de France and that the proportions of the fagade
as a whole required an Order of great weight and majesty.
Whatever the role of Louis Le Vau in the evolution of the
1667 project for the Louvre, Francois Le Vau’s involvement in
the revision of that project went further than mere advocacy. In
so far as his defence specifically deals with the east wing it is
closely related to a project published over his own name, in
which the revised end pavilions are almost direct quotations of
the corps-de-logis of Pietro da Cortona’s west front and
this design marks the transition from the project of 1667 to the
executed one#! The latter followed Francois Le Vau's ap-
proach for the side pavilions, doubling the side pilasters, but the
simplified central pavilion was also derived from Cortona’s
‘quarto disegno’: there was to be only one attic storey above the
king's floor but, as in Frangois Le Vau’s project, the Order
embracing both these storeys was greater than that of the 1667
colonnade: the medallions of Lescot. used in the 1667 project
above the first-floor windows, were kept instead of the rect-
angular panels which Le Vau borrowed from Cortona for the
blind attic of his east facade.
The general disposition of a rusticated basement supporting
an Order before the piano nobile with an attic above the Order
and the specific use of rectangular panels above the first-floor
windows provide an intriguing link between Francois Le Vau's
project for the Louvre and the scheme devised at much the same
time — probably in the spring of 1668 — for the new garden range
at Versailles. If one were to search for a French precedent for the
Roman approach to ordonnance which the king was known to
prefer after the visit of Bernini — as the office of the Premier
Architecte presumably did when planning the enlargement of
Versailles early in 1668 — one could hardly do better than
Salomon de Brosse’s Palais des Etats at Rennes — ttself derived
trom the Roman tradition of Bramante through Primaticcio’s
Aile de la Belle Cheminée at Fontainebleau — which includes
even the deep central recession in the first floor. so important to
the new work at Versailles. One need only replace de Brosse’s
high roof with an attic above the Order and add rectangular
panels above the windows of the piano nobile to have all the
essentials of the Versailles scheme.
The discussion between the architects concerned and the
officials in the Surintendance about the revision of the 1667
Louvre project shows that the transformation of the Roman
forms of Bernini and Cortona into the principal models of later
French Classical architecture was directed in accordance with
basic academic principles — bienséance or convenance above all.
and vraisemblance — and this was clearly Claude Perrault’s
171
149
126 Parc lle brance
176 Versailles, engraving of the Escalier des Ambassadeurs by Louis Le
Vau and Charles Le Brun, begun in 1671
role’ Charles Perrault’s objections to the projected
heightening of the south wing were precisely those Claude
raised against the proposal to complete the Cour carrée by
substituting a full Order for Lescot’s attic: that it was contrary
to convenance to raise a habitable storey of equal magnificence
over that of the king and that the height of a building should not
necessarily be proportioned to its length. Moreover the
colonnade, compared by Perrault to the peristyle of an antique
temple, ts strictly Roman in the detail of tts Order and Claude
was the one member of the Commission with pronounced
archaeological leanings.
As Colbert’s principal advisers on architectural theory the
Perraults would have played a role similar to that of the Frearts
under Sublet, and Charles Perrault, like Chambray, wrote a
Paralléle of the “Ancients’ and “Moderns’. The similarity stops
there for, whereas Chambray preached the need to return to the
ancient Classical authorities and learn again to apply their ideas
in all their purity, Perrault dared to suggest that blind adulation
of the Antique was irrational and that his own contemporaries
had made great advances on it. Chambray’s views reflect
those of Sublet but Sublet’s policy was to provide an authorita-
tive French school of art: Perrault’s views reflect the conclusion
which Colbert drew logically enough from the same policy. If
Colbert's conception of state order required rules for the arts,
his conception of French prestige required that those rules
should be French and, therefore, modern. Thus, ironic as it may
seem that an independent-minded critical spirit should be
brought to the service of the authoritarian state, it is clear that
the very idea of an absolute standard of beauty, embodied in the
Antique, had to be challenged if an authoritative French
standard was to be set up — that Claude Perrault in his
ordonnance had to demonstrate that beauty was relative if he
was to clear the way for the acceptance of a definitive French
schedule of proportions.
Most of the inconsistencies in the alignment of the leading
figures of the period can, in fact, be explained in terms of
expediency. Charles Perrault well illustrated the anomaly of Le
Brun’s position as champion of the Ancients, for instance, when
praising him in Les Honunes Illustres as the greatest of the
Moderns. The hero of the Ancients, Poussin, had failed to
provide a model in the Grande Galerie of the Louvre for the
type of decoration which the courts of Mazarin and Louis XIV
required, and Raphael, at the Farnesina and Villa Madama,
was hardly an adequate alternative; but in taking Cortona as
his model Le Brun was more successful than almost any other
French artist in using Baroque devices. For in Cortona’s work
he found an inspiration well attuned to his native ability to
handle vast compositions in a free and lively manner, to cover
vast spaces with a vigorous but coherent fusion of the arts, and
however sincere his admiration for Poussin and Raphael there
is more than a trace of personal ambition, of concession to the
regime of Colbert, in his dogmatic stand for the Ancients in
theory — reflected in his practice as a not always happy con-
straint on his native talents. By the same token the anti-
academic stance of Mignard, who supplanted Le Brun under
Louvois, can similarly be fully explained only in terms of
personal rivalry. For his part, Claude Perrault — the Modern —
was In practice inspired by the Antique and drew directly upon
his study of it in the transformation of the Baroque projects for
the Louvre to meet the needs of the king and Colbert, yet he
discussed the proposals of his colleagues not primarily in the
habitual terms of the proportions and details of the Orders but
of vratsemblance and convenance — of what was true, or at least
apparently true, to physical realities and of what was appropri-
ate for modern usage, in particular the usage of the king of
France. And though submission to the rules of proportion in
architecture was obviously a fundamental condition of Col-
bert’s rational order for the arts, it was above all their confor-
mity to the rules of convenance, reflecting the hierarchical order
of the French monarchy, which gave the Colonnade and the
garden facade of Versailles their authoritativeness.
The new work at Versailles enveloping the original chateau of
Louis XIII was underway by autumn of 1668 and, halted in
1669 when a more radical rebuilding exercise was briefly
entertained, completed in 1671. The facade was altered for the
insertion of the Galerie des Glaces and addition of the vast
north and south wings by J.H. Mansart in 1678. Though Colbert
and his assistants ensured that the king received a building of
high quality — in its original form — inevitably it was outshone
by the splendour of the gardens and interior decorations which
preoccupied the king as the setting for his court. Unequalled tn
extent and variety though they were, Le Notre’s gardens were
based on the principles he had applied at Vaux and the
Tuileries and which Francois Mansart had evolved at Blois and
Maisons. The interiors, executed by Le Brun between 1671] and
1686, are based on a similar combination of the arts as those at
Vaux and the Galerie d’Apollon in the Louvre but the high
relief stucco work, especially the figural element, is reduced, the
integrity of the painted zones is never violated, and though
illusionist panels generally occupied the centres of the ceilings
and in the corners of the greater rooms glimpses of the sky are
revealed beyond balustrades with spectators, non-illusionist
panels play an increasingly important role. The walls are now
covered with velvet or encrusted with marbles, richly coloured
and varied in regular geometrical patterns rather than panels in
several tiers painted with arabesques as at Vaux. The rooms are
rectangular in the main, as Colbert had rejected ‘les figures
rondes’ in his criticism of Le Vau’s 1669 scheme for the
complete rebuilding of the Chateau. As usual in France a
continuous Classical cornice marks the junction of wall and
ceiling and in the principal spaces — for instance the Escalier des
Ambassadeurs or the Galerie des Glaces — a full Order was
Fi
176
177 Versailles. Salon de Diane by Le Vau, Le Brun and his pupils. showing
Bernini's busi of Louis XLV
adopted. An Order was not in itself unfamiliar in French
interiors since the work of Lemercier at the Louvre under
Sublet but now, executed in the richest marbles and gilt bronze,
combined with sculpture and painting — in which illustonism
plays an tmportant role in the Escalier des Ambassadeurs — 1t
was an essential element of the final permutation of Le Brun’s
approach to the fusion of the arts which began with his
experience of Cortona and Romanelli nearly forty years before.
The clear lines of the Louvre colonnade and the garden
facade at Versailles —- the sustained horizontals of a strong
basement surmounted by a faithfully observed Order and often
Colbert and the maturity of Louis XIV 129
“
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a balustrade masking the roof — were to be the hallmarks of
French Classical architecture from the later 1660s onwards. Yet
many of the principal royal works of Jules Hardouin Mansart
show less restrained Baroque devices — presumably to satisfy the
king.*? His models were occasionally contemporary Italian
works but more often those of his French predecessors. Thus on
the one hand the relationship between the Galerie des Glaces
and the Salons de la Guerre and de la Paix must be compared to
that between the Salone and Galleria of the slightly earlier
Palazzo Colonna in Rome. On the other hand the curved
facades of the twin stable blocks at Versailles (1679) into which
all the elements were bound by a consistent articulation of the
utmost simplicity, might be taken as revisions of Le Vau's
Collége des Quatre Nations. So too might the Dome des
179
178
130 Part 11 France
Invalides, as originally planned in 1679 with detached quadrant
arcades. The church itself was directly derived from Francois
Mansart’s designs for the Bourbon chapel of St Denis, its High
Renaissance plan crowned by a cut-off dome with vertical
perspective and dramatic lighting, and its fagade subjected
to a climactic movement by the breaking forward of its super-
imposed Orders with the plane of the wall in progressive stages,
the upper Order one step behind the lower tn achieving full
plasticity. The great rusticated Orangery at Versailles, 1681,
retains something of the vitality and Baroque boldness of scale
which Le Pautre borrowed from Le Vau, without the manner-
isms of either. The colouristic effects of Le Vau'’s Trianon
de Porcelainc were consciously emulated in the Trianon de
Marbre (1687) which replaced it —a unique example of such rich
external revetment in France. And Marly (1679) — where the
principal pavilion was placed at the head of a great pool flanked
by small guest pavilions in serried ranks — recalled Torelli in its
theatrical perspectives, its painted architecture and sculpture:
indeed it crystallized something of the fantasy of the first
Versailles during one of the king’s great early féies.
t78 Below Paris, Invalides, exterior of the Eglise du Dome by J. H.
Mansarl, 1680-91
179 Below right J. H. Mansarlt, engraving of the project for the completion
of the Invalides
180 Opposite Nancy, Place Stanislas. Gilded iron grilles by Emmanuel
Héré, 1752-55
The decline of Louis XIV,
the Regency and Louis XV
Colbert died in 1683, and the discretion with which that great
minister guided the king’s absolutism was wanting in his
successor Louvois. Staggering under the burden of Louis XTV’s
conception of his monarchy, following the extravagant ex-
pansion of Versailles, France was reduced by the severe reverses
in the almost ceaseless, and now increasingly futile, war waged
to further that conception to an equally ceaseless threat of
bankruptcy. Yet in the brief moment of peace following the
Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 the last monumental projects of the
reign—the Place Vendome, the decoration of the Dome des
Invalides, the Chapel at Versailles, the high altar of Notre-Dame
— conceived and even begun much earlier, were completed.
Mansart’s ability to appeuse the king’s taste for the Baroque
without breaking the bounds of academic Classical discipline is
revealed in each of them.
The Place Vend6me and the earlier Place des Victoires,
conforming to the now canonical Roman ordonnance in the
Louvre version with a colossal Order proportioned to an ex-
tensive open space, were to be held up by the Academy as the
models for the French Classical square. Despite the reticence of
their ordonnance these royal squares were essentially exercises
in scenic architecture. designed first and foremost to glorify the
king whose statue they framed, inviting comparison with such
Roman Baroque conceptions as the Piazza of St Peter’s rather
than the essentially practical Place Royale of Henry IV. The
great ecclesastical projects brought to completion tn this per-
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iod are also essentially Baroque conceptions subjected to the
discipline of academic Classical principles. The ordonnance of
the Louvre colonnade was translated to the interior of the
chapel at Versailles to provide the great height needed for the
provision of the king’s tribune on the level of the grands
appartements — ironically enough producing an almost Gothic
sense of verticality which was further developed in a Baroque
way by Coypel in his great quadratura ceiling. To the Dome des
Invalides also was now added a quite Jtalianate richness in the
gilt trophies on the exterior of the dome. in the sumptuous
colossal Order and vigorous relief panels of the intenor and
above all in the high altar, with its black Salomonic columns,
based on Bernini's composition in St Peters. This same ap-
proach was adopted for the new altar erected in Notre-Dame in
response to the king's determination to fulfill his father’s vow.
After the completion of these great works for Louis XIV. and
with the construction of the Chateau-Nenf for the Dauphin at
Mendon. crown patronage virtually ceased until the maturity
of Lonis XV, but the monumental tradition was kept alive by
the king’s architects in the service of the intendants of several
French provinces. the Bourbons in Spain and the princely and
ecclesiastical courts of north-eastern France and western Ger-
many. The two leaders here were Mansart’s chief collaborator
and successor. Robert de Cotte, whose own share of the
responsibility for the late works of Louis XIV in Paris is great,
and their younger assistant Germain Boffrand.*
An independent spirit working for an independent court,
Boffrand went back to the French masters of the mid
seventeenth century and to Bernini's projects for the Louvre, to
borrow some of the basic Baroque devices which had been
rejected by academic French Classicism. Thus for the duke of
Lorraine's palace at Lunéville, 1702-06, modelled on Le Vau's
Versailles, he drew the vast plan together in the middle by
reviving the massive portico of unfluted Corinthian columns
which Le Vau had incorporated in the south front of the Louvre
and which Colbert had prevented him from extending around
the east front. In his first project. 1711. for the duke's retreat at
La Malgrange he used the same Order to bind the great
projecting central pavilion containing a vast oval salon into the
composition, expressing the distinction between the pavilions
and the corps-de-logis by confining the Order to the latter — as
pilasters on the sides and columns only in the centre.
Despite its rejection by the Crown, the projecting oval salon
providing the climax to the principal enfilade was Le Vau's chief
contribution to the development of the French chateau in the
late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Like many of his
contemporaries and successors — such as Bullet at Champs at
the beginning of the century and Ange-Jacques Gabriel at St
Hubert over fifty vears later — Robert de Cotte incorporated
such a projecting central salon in his great schemes at the end of
the War of the Spanish Succession in 1714. for the king of
Spain, the electors of Bavaria and Cologne, and, in 1723 in
competition with Boffrand. for the prince-bishop of Wurzburg.
Emulating Versailles in ideal plans for all these at first. he
modified that ideal to accommodate existing building at Schl-
eissheim and Bonn or in accordance with the equally grandiose
ideal set by the Escorial in Spain. At Schleissheim he introduced
diagonal axes by inserting circular rooms in the corners of the
181 Opposite Paris, Hotel de Soubise, Salon Ovale by Germain Boffrand,
with painiings by Charles Naloire, 1735
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183 Centre Luneéville, exterior of the chateau by Germain Boffrand,
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184 Bottom Robert de Cotte, plan for the first projec! for the Neues
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185 Nancy, engraving of the fagade of the Ducal Palace by Germain
Boffrand
wings flanking the cour d'honneur — a device which reveals his
knowledge of Francois Mansart’s plans for the Louvre.
Preferring the Roman ordonnance of the Colonnade or
Versailles for most of these projects, he revived the ‘incorrect’
expression of the Order in terms of the half columns of Bernin1’s
third project for the Louvre in the plans for Buenretiro near
Madrid and later actually applied such an Order to the river
front of the palace which he built for the prince-bishop of
Strasbourg from 1720 onwards.
Boffrand showed an even more pervasive interest 1n Bernini's
projects for the Louvre in a second idea for La Malgrange. A
virtuoso exercise in planning, Baroque in its conception of
unity, it is dominated by a rotunda expanding the great curved
central pavilion of Bernini's first project but instead of setting
this off against concave wings, like Bernini, he made it the pivot
for four diagonal wings as Fischer von Erlach had done for
Count Althan ec. 1693. A colossal Order rising from the ground,
as in the Louvre projects of both Bernini and Le Vau, was used
around the rotunda and before the fagades closing the triangles
between the divergent wings. The entrance was placed in one of
these and the vista down the main axis — inviting a progression
from the vestibule and gallery inserted into the first triangle
through the great circular central space, to the heart-shaped
staircase and oval salon of the second triangle — would have
been incredibly rich. [n his last important work for the duke of
Lorraine, the ‘Louvre’ of Nancy, Boffrand used the broad
concave recession of Bernini's first and second projects to frame
a vast temple front motif but instead of a colossal Order resting
on the ground this time he introduced the ordonnance of the
Colonnade, as expressed in the great royal squares of Jules
Hardouin, to Nancy. The local architect Héré, like most of his
contemporaries working on civic schemes in provincial capitals
in the first half of the eighteenth century, followed that example
for his Place Royale in Nancy. Even the interpolation of playful
Rococo iron work, seductive as it is, does not deny the essen-
tially Classical academicism of the ordonnance nor the Baroque
grandeur of the conception which embraced three linked
squares.
Splendid as the late works of Louis X1V and those planned
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by his architects for foreign princes were — or would have been
had they all been realized — the most significant contribution of
the period of his decline was the development of the non-
monumental, anti-architectural mode of interior decoration
which produced the Rococo. In this mode the Orders had no
place — or they were invaded, eaten away and undermined by
naturalistic or stylized floral motifs in a mockery of their claim
to express the forces implicit in structure. Moreover the strict
geometrical division of traditional French revetment was also
abandoned in favour of irregular and increasingly sensuous
mouldings which actually invaded the field they surrounded,
breaking down the distinction between frame and framed.
The first steps on the path which was to lead to this new
decorative style were taken in the office of the Premier Archi-
tecte at Versailles in the last decade of the seventeenth century —
doubtless under the direction of Jules Hardouin himself though
the responsibility is sometimes credited, unconvincingly, to his
draughtsman Pierre Le Pautre.* With the disappearance of
Colbert Le Brun’s influence was undermined by Louvois and in
any case the Italianate grandeur which he had done more than
anyone else to translate into French, using the most sumptuous
materials, could no longer be afforded. Besides, in 1686 Le Brun
had finished the Grande Galerie — and with it the Grands
Appartements — and the king’s attention turned to the develop-
ment of a style more fitted for personal apartments. This
culminated in the decoration of rooms for his granddaughter-
in-law, the duchesse de Bourgogne, in 1698 where, His Majesty
decreed, “il faut qu'il y ait de la jeunesse mélée dans ce que }’on
fera. 2°
A new suite of rooms decorated for the king following the
death of the queen in 1684, was given wood panelling, stil] in
superimposed tiers of regular geometric shapes, painted white
and gold throughout; tall mirrors, some reaching to the cor-
nices, were placed over mantelpieces, instead of paintings:
windows were elongated and sometimes arched. The same
desire for relative simplicity, lightness and clarity, the same
tendency to develop vertical accents, characterized the decor-
ation of the more private rooms at Versailles and a new Suite at
Trianon (1686-91), the increasingly elongated, but still geo-
186 Opposite Nancy, gritle in the gardens of the Place Royale (Place
Stanislas) by Emmanuel Here, 1752-55
The decline of Louis XPV. the Regency and Louis X\
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1699
metrical, panelling being subjected to an Order 1n the parade
rooms at Trianon.
In work for the Crown painted arabesques, which had for-
merly decorated the rectangular panels of most French in-
teriors, as at Vaux, were now used only in intimate rooms. Here
and in the main rooms of private houses, where marble and
bronze were not appropriate and painted vaults were rare,
Berain and later Claude II] Audran developed this type of
decoration from the example of Le Brun —an interlinking of the
band-work popular with the Northern Mannerists and the
acanthus tendrils of the grotteschi of the followers of Raphael
introduced into France by the first School of Fontainebleau, in
which figural elements like herms or sphinxes grow from the
foliage to support medallions, simulated relief panels, bald-
achins etc. Béerain decorated the new, elongated panels of the
Dauphin’s cabinet at Meudon (1699) and his arabesques 1n-
vaded the field of framed pilaster strips flanking a fashionable
tall, arched mirror in a way which anticipated the Rococo.
Restrained though it yet was such a violation had hardly been
seen in France since the period of Francis 1. The apartments
installed for the littlhe duchesse de Bourgogne and in the
Menagerie at Versailles in 1698, were decorated by members
of Mansart’s studio in the same spirit. In one of the rooms the
impost, pushed up into an arch by the tall mirror, breaks and
curls and from the scrolls carved foliage shoots out to invade
the spandrels which themselves are formed into trregular fields
separated by a great shell — thus the arabesque work, hitherto
painted on the surface of the panels, was now carved and fused
with the frame. Moreover a delicate foliage invaded the framed
pilasters supporting this arch, denying them any suggestion of
strength though they retained Ionic capitals and bases. In 1699
similar tall, arched mirrors surmounted by panels with their
{rames interrupted by ‘C or ‘S’ scrolls, masks, shells, etc. and
supported by pilaster strips hardly related to an Order, framed
and invaded by band-work or foliage, were installed in the
apartments of Marly. And at the very centre of Versailles two
years later in the new bedroom installed for the king, which
retained a full Composite Order, arabesques invaded the shafts
of the lonic pilasters supporting the !all arched mirrors and the
panels of the doors. In the neighbouring Antichambre de | ’Oeil-
de-Boeuf, with its ravishing frieze of children playing with
garlands, the frames of the panels above the windows, mirrors
and doors were filled with acanthus scrolls and the still
rectangular panels of wainscot and doors were dominated by
filigree rosettes, palmettes etc.
From these beginnings the style quickly developed in the
panelling of the last important works for the Crown before the
king’s death 1n 1715, the furniture of the chapel of Versailles
and the Choir of Notre-Dame, but more particularly in the
comfortable modern Adte/s now being built in Paris. In the
reception rooms of these essentially private houses, as in the
withdrawing rooms, the Orders were not considered conyen-
ables; though vestigial pilasters, panelled and invaded by
arabesques, were occasionally used, in heu of an effective
architectonic structure a symmetrical geometric frame re-
mained the basis of order |hroughout, even when corners were
rounded and cornices reduced to a hollow cove, the upper edge
of which broke out into the field of the ceiling. But within this
framework the formerly regular pattern of panels and mirrors
was first modified by circles and ovals and then dissolved into
undulations. Arabesque forms, not only ‘C’ or ‘S’ scrolls but
herms — usually in the form of ‘tétes en espagnolette’ — masks,
symmetrical coquilles, sphinxes etc. and Jater their more bizarre
relatives such as irregular rocaille shell-work, dragons and bat-
wings, assumed a more important role not only in framing
mirrors, dessus-de-porte and the increasingly large panels which
filled the wall between the major accents provided by the
mirrors, the windows and the doors but even on the upper edge
of coves which began to break out into the ceiling. On the
sensuously curved base of the organ in the chapel at Versailles
(1709-10) the palmier — presumably in this context a permuta-
tion of the martyr’s palm bul quickly to become a generally
popular molif with Rococo designers — made its first ap-
pearance and the figurative reliefs which dominated the choir
stalls at Notre-Dame were to be reflected in the cartouche-
framed scenes, rimmed with shell or foliage, which were to
occupy the centres of many later panels as an alternative to
188 Studio of J. H. Mansart, drawing for a cabinet in the Menagerie,
Versailles, 1698. Paris, National Archives
187
190
189
{89 Paris, engraving of the Galerie Doree in the Hotel de Toulouse by
Robert de Cotle and Francois-Antoine Vasse, 1718-19
rosettes in domestic interiors.
These late ecclesiastical works were carried out under Robert
de Cotte but the Premier Architecte and his colleagues in the
Batiments du Roi, under-employed on royal works, were deeply
involved in the private sector. Working here for such important
figures as the duc dOrleans and the comte de Toulouse, who had
scarcely dared to leave Versailles until the tragic series of royal
deaths in 1711-12 reduced it to a very morbid place indeed,
there was scope further to develop the tradition of Le Brun for
great interiors where the Orders were required — vestibules,
stairwells, galleries, chambres de parade, great salons, the
last represented by the Salon d‘Hercule at Versailles. The
two principal works of this type, the Galerie Doree of the Hotel
de Toulouse, carried out under the direction of de Cotte, and
the Galerie d’Enée of the Palais-Royal by the Flemish designer
Oppenord, who spent much time in Rome and whose principal
earlier works in Paris were Baroque altars, offer a particularly
instructive comparison. Dominated by a robust fluted Corinth-
ian Order the Galerie d’Enée was no less architectonic than the
Galerie des Glaces though the vigorous sculpture with which
Oppenord interrupted the entablature and the weighty obelisks
with trophies which he applied to the panels between the
pilasters were certainly more Baroque than the relief work in
the late interiors of Le Brun. There is also an Order and a
considerable amount of figure sculpture — relating to the
count’s two chief concerns. the sea and the chase — in the
Galerie Dorée but here de Cotte allowed his sculptor Vasse to
treat the shafts of the pilasters as panels decorated with
arabesques in the way by now familiar in less important rooms,
reducing them to transparent fictions of support, and the rest of
the woodwork, especially the frames of the murals between the
pilasters, is as sensuous and light-hearted as any of the period
which led to the Rococo.
Of de Cotte’s associates active in the domestic field in the first
The decline of Louis XIV, the Regency and Louts XV 137
DECORATION DE. LA GALLERIE DU PALAIS ROYAL, VUE DU COTE DE LA CHEMINEF
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190 Paris, engraving of the Galerie d‘Enée in the Palais-Royal by Gilles-
Marie Oppenord, 1717
decades of the eighteenth century, Boffrand made several of the
most important contributions to the further development of the
style. In the salon of the Petit Luxembourg (1710) for instance,
he first experimented with the curving of an uninterrupted
impost up over the arches of doors. windows and mirrors to
form a sort of scalloped valance right round the room at the
expense of the tectonic frame. With the rounding of the corners
and the reduction of the cornice to a support for an up-
turned fringe of foliage in the cove of the ceiling, this tended
towards the blurring of the structural lines and prepared for
that ambivalent relationship between walls and ceiling which
was to be the key to his most dazzling interiors. A crucial stage
on the way was the circular salon at La Malgrange (1711) where
the arched upper windows penetrated the cove and their
balconies were supported by figures resting on the imposts of
the arched doors and windows below them. The most specta-
cular examples of the type, perhaps the most ravishing rooms
surviving from the period, are the oval salons which he installed
for the Prince and Princesse de Soubise in their Paris /idre/ about
1735. In the upper room walls, spandrels, cove and ceiling are
merged in a splendid fusion of the arts: the crucial role is played
by vestigial pendentives in undulating frames, containing
Natoire’s Psyche panels, supported by putti resting on the upper
curves of the main wall panels and crowned by stucco
cartouches in sprays of foliage linked both across the ceiling to
the central rosette by filigree bands and around the cove by a
quivering moulding, supporting more putti over more car-
touches crowning the arched embrasures of the windows,
mirrors and doors.
The incredible fertility of invention which Boffrand displayed
in these rooms was disciplined by a strict regularity and each
individual element was essentially symmetrical — unless the
panels of the doors of the sa/on at La Malgrange were in fact to
have been as represented in the engravings of 1745.°’ By the
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192 Above left Nancy, engraving of a section through the central salon of
the Chateau de la Malgrange by G. Boffrand, begun 1711
193 Above right Nicolas Pineau, drawing of a projeci for panelling. Paris,
Musée des Arts Décoratifs
fourth decade of the century, even while he was working on the
Hotel de Soubise, Nicolas Pineau and Juste-Auréle Meisson-
nier, experimenting with asymmetry, had produced the ‘genre
pittoresque’, the fully evolved phase of Rococo in France.
Meissonnier — born in Turin of Provengal parents, trained as
a goldsmith and considered by most mid-eighteenth-century
crilics as primarily responsible for the invention of the ‘genre
pittoresque’ — had first experimented with rugous forms and
asymmetrical composition in silver and gold then, as Directeur
de la Chambre et du Cabinet du Roi from 1726, in decorations
for court fetes and ceremonies, occasionally in architecture and
above all in fantastic ornament engraved as an end in itself. It
was his metal-work and the compositions in his books of
ornament — ‘des Fontaines, des Cascades, des Ruines, des
Rocailles et Coquillages, des morceaux d’Architecture qui font
des effets bizarres, singuliers et pittoresques, par leurs formes
piquantes et extraordinaires, dont souvent aucune partie ne
repond a J’autre’** — which earned him the reputation of having
invented the ‘genre pittoresque’ but he executed nothing like
them in the field of architecture. external or internal, in France
and thus — ironically — escaped the severer censures of the mid-
century critics. Indeed the projects which he did produce for
execution — usually abroad — are hardly Rococo at all. For
instance his design for the completion of Saint Sulpice (1726) is
certainly Baroque, employing Orders before contrasted con-
cave and convex sections of wall in the manner of Borromini,
though the profile of the transept roofs, with their asymmetrical
palmier finials, anticipated the architectural fantasies of his
Livre d'Ornemens which, composed of twirling consoles and
asymmetrical arches, defy the laws of gravity — and categoriza-
tion. Equally plastic in treatment, and using asymmetry in a
similar way, was the panelling Meissonnier designed for the
Maison Bréthous in Bayonne about 1733. In its plasticity as in
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some of its motifs — if not in its irresponsibility — his approach
here too is related to the Italian Baroque of Turin. The scheme
which Meissonnter produced for the Polish Count Bielenski in
1734, with its guadratura ceiling feigning the expansion of the
space of the room, might similarly be called Baroque, were it
possible to speak of architecture at all in this context of
riotously asymmetrical anti-structural and rocaille forms.
The genre of fantastic ornament engraved with little thought
of practical application had long been well represented in
France but in the fourth decade of the eighteenth century the
suites published by Meissonnier and his contemporaries, in
194
196
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194 Above Juste-Auréle Meissonnier, engraving of a fantastic design,
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195 Above right Juste-Auréle Meissonnier, engraving of a project for a
cabinet for M. Bielenski, 1734
196 Below right Juste-Auréle Meissonnier, drawing of a project for the west
front of Saint Sulpice, Paris. H’addesdon Manor
particular Jacques de Lajoue, had an unlooked-for conse-
quence. Especially their cartouches — which fused disparate
elements often in naturalistic settings and referred back to works
of Stefano della Bella from the mid seventeenth century but were
essentially asymmetrical like those of Toro in the 1720s and
reflected the current mania for shelly and watery forms antici-
pated in the marine context of the Galerie Doree and in the
engraved work of Oppenord — had an important effect on the
design of panelling at the hands of Pineau who, accordingly.
was the principal butt of the mid-century anti-Rococo critics
attacks. After a period in Russia Pineau was active in Paris
from the early 1730s where his first works were in the context of
the essentially linear, surface ornament of the Régence. However
his style developed under the direct impact of the fourth-decade
engravers. He introduced individually asymmetrical elements
which were not necessarily balanced by their mirror images 1n
neighbouring panels, as they had generally been hitherto, and he
showed a marked preference for fantastic motifs such as
serpentine dragons and rich shell work, resorting less and less to
the superimposed grotesque motifs popular with the masters of
the previous decades. Ultimately he avoided straight lines
whenever possible and relied solely on the asymmetrical play of
curved frame mouldings meeting in, or focussed upon, highly
plastic rocaille cartouches.
Academic critics had tolerated the Rococo ~— indeed wel-
comed it for private rooms — until they saw the ‘genre pittores-
que’ threatening the fundamental principles of Classical art.°° For
the Parisian héte/, both inside and out, far from representing a
relaxation of academic discipline, was one of 1ts most character-
istic expressions. It was designed to satisfy the standards of
comfort and convenience now demanded in private life. Ad-
vances in planning were certainly accompanied by the develop-
ment of the Rococo style of ornament originally invented to
make living spaces more agreeable. Stressing the importance of
convenance in distribution and discounting the value of sym-
metry in plans— beyond centralization about the major rooms —
academic theorists like J. F. Blondel in the middle of the
eighteenth century remained proud of the improvement of
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planning because it was regulated. but they came to despise the
development of ornament because it was unprincipled and for
one to equate the changes in these two fields. to talk of “Rococo
planning’, would be misguided. In any case the most important
features of the plans of both town and country houses in
eighteenth-century France — the convenient arrangement of
apartments and the projection of living rooms into the gardens
~ were the legacies of Le Vau and special features — such as
dining rooms. corridors for servants — had been the concern of
Jules Hardouin Mansart. Nor was there anything specifically Poa
Rococo about the virtuoso planning ability needed by most
Parisian architects to satisfy these requirements on irregular
sites: that need was dictated by an unflagging will to uphold
academic principles and ensure the symmetry of individual
rooms, mask oblique junctions. preserve unimpeded the uni-
fying enfilades through and across the building — and. as early as
1657. Le Pautre had shown the way. Even a plan as extraordin-
199 arily Baroque as Boffrand’s Hotel Amelot conformed to these
principles. And the principle of convenance which distinguished
private from public rooms, dictating where they should be
placed, also regulated the ordonnance of fagades: the Orders
were appropriate only for royal or public buildings, private
houses should be simple. unostentatious. but conform to the spirit
of the appropriate Order in decorative details and proportions.
When, as the eighteenth century advanced. Rococo ornament y
began, tentatively. to spread from the interior to the exterior of ae o . i tla, stones
buildings it was time to call a halt. For licence permissible in . 4 ——
private would certainly corrupt if displayed in public and it was ls
precisely in that type of building upon which it was not
appropriate to use the Orders that the danger was al its greatest.
The office of the Batiments du Roi had never indulged in the
extravagance of the ‘genre pittoresque’. even when producing
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for a child king. Ange-Jacques Gabriel went on providing 197 Opposite Versailles, Cabinet de Musique de Madame Adelaide by
197 ravishing Rococo designs throughout his career as Premier Ange-Jacques Gabnel. executed 1752-53. modified 1767
Architecte, when it was necessary to match existing work, but
' ; : 198 Top Claude Aubry, engraving of a project for the Place Louis XV,
before the middle of the century the first sign of reaction against Paris. 1748
the Rococo approach to interior decoration appeared in one of
his earliest unconstrained works. the Salon of the Pavillon 199 Above Paris, plan of the Hotel Amelot de Gournay by Boffrand, 1712
liz
198
173
142 Paid ee Prance
Francais in the garden of the Trianon, which was given a full
Order.”
Gabriel had inherited an unbroken tradition of monumental
architecture from his predecessors — his father Jacques V,
Robert de Cotte and Jules Hardouin Mansart. Despite the lack
of opportunities for great works in the period from the decline
of Louis XIV to the maturity of Louis XV, the vitality of that
tradition was well illustrated by the enthusiastic response to the
competition for a Place Louis XV for Paris in 1748. The entries
were mostly modelled on the projects of the French architects of
Louis XIV but Boffrand referred to Bernini's first project for
the Louvre as he had done nearly half a century earher for the
duc de Lorraine’s palace at Nancy. The king ordered Gabriel to
draw upon all that was best in the entries and his executed
project, while demonstrably satisfying the king’s requirements,
is a commentary on the Colonnade of the Louvre, more Classi-
cal in rejecting the coupled columns yet still Baroque in the scale
of the Order and the vigour of the contrast between mass and
void. And in the scope of the conception, preserving the vista
from the Tuileries to the Champs Elysées on the east-west axis
and disposing the twin buildings on either side of a street
extending the north-south axis from the river to the chmax of
the whole civic scheme in the church of the Madeleine, it was
hardly inferior to any of the great Baroque schemes of
seventeenth-century Rome.
Elsewhere, when the occasion required, Gabriel did not
abstain from specifically Baroque motifs — such as the
academically ‘incorrect’ Order of colossal half-columns which
he borrowed from Bernini's third project for the Louvre for the
1759 grand projet for Versailles — but the basic attitude of his
contemporaries in the Royal Academy of Architecture is better
illustrated by his revision in 1754 of a project by the Danish
architect Eigtwedt for a great church commissioned by Fred-
erick V for Copenhagen. In two projects, the first keeping to the
executed foundations, Gabriel went back to Eigtwedt’s princt-
pal source, Juvarra’s Superga, and then further back to Juv-
arra’s own principal source, S. Agnese. In his second project he
gave the facade a great concave recession, as at S. Agnese. only
to annihilate the movement latent in the device by clamping
the great temple front of Juvarra’s Superga across it. For both
projects he clearly recalled the dome of the Superga but with
reference back to St Peter’s he reversed the essentially Baroque
process by which the mass and weight of cupolas had been
progressively reduced with the heightening and lightening of
the drum. Eigtwedt had taken this to an extreme and Gabriel
not only revised the relative heights of dome and drum but
enlarged the piers between the openings in the latter into blind
bays to give more weight. In his first project he recessed the
entablature above the windows like Juvarra, associating the
Order with the blind bays. In the second project, on the
contrary, the Order in antis belongs to the window bays, and the
plane of the great piers is now the most forward one of the
drum. The motif of columns in antis here may come from
Cortona’s dome of S. Carlo al Corso but it also appears in
Rainaldi’s towers at S. Agnese — which both Juvarra and
Gabriel recalled. There is a piquancy about this precise quot-
ation from S. Agnese because Gabriel's project is clearly a
correction of the approach to design expounded in such works
as S. Agnese by High Baroque architects — the influence of
whom was considered so dangerous by the theorists of acad-
emic French Classicism.
200 Above left A. J. Gabriel, drawing of the second project for the
Frederikskirke, Copenhagen, elevation and seclion. Copenhagen, Royal
Archives
201 Above A. J. Gabriel, plan for the second project for the
Frederikskirke, Copenhagen. Copenhagen, Royal Archives
Fecal eles
Flanders, England and Holland
Flanders
In the first half of the sixteenth century, owing to a series of
dynastic marriages and inheritances, the Low Countries, which
correspond to modern Belgium and Holland, became part of
the vast empire of Charles V. When he abdicated in 1555 he
handed them over to his son Philip IT to whom he also gave the
kingdom of Spain, and from that time onwards they were
governed from Madrid. The Reformation had made great
progress in the Low Countries and several of the most impor-
tant cities, including Antwerp, the greatest port of northern
Europe, became largely converted to the new faith. Philip was
determined to destroy the heresy and sent the duke of Alba to
exterminate or convert its adherents. After years of civil war the
northern provinces of Holland and Zeeland seceded and
established a separate predominantly Protestant state, under the
rule of William of Orange, which was eventually recognized by
Spain at the treaty of Munster in 1648. Antwerp had meanwhile
been reconverted to Catholicism and remained under Spanish
rule, but the northern states held the mouth of the Scheldt and
were thus able to block its access to the sea, with disastrous
effects on its trade. It remained however the richest city of the
southern or Spanish Netherlands and a great centre for intell-
ectual and religious activities.
The ideas of Italian Renaissance architects penetrated into
the Netherlands in much the same way as in other countries
north of the Alps, that is to say, by the spread of Italianate
decorative motifs which were applied to buildings in the Gothic
style; but there was one exception to the rule: the palace erected
in Brussels about 1550, probably by Sebastian van Noyen
(c. 1493-1557), for the great statesman Antoine Perrenot, Bishop
of Arras, later known as Cardinal Granvelle, who had spent
many years in Rome. The palace. which is an adaptation of
Antonio da Sangallo’s two lower storeys of the court in the
Palazzo Farnese, with the half-columins replaced by pilasters, 1s
one of the few works built north of the Alps which show a real
understanding of the principles of Roman High Renaissance
architecture.!
By comparison the Town Hall at Antwerp, executed and
probably designed by Cornelis Floris (1514-75), though it 1s
one of the most impressive sixteenth-century Flemish buildings,
looks provincial. It is articulated with the correct Orders —
though not very correctly designed but they are applied to a
facade which rises in the middle to a tall gable. almost like a
truncated belfry. Floris’ influence, however, was mainly as a
decorator, and he evolved a type of grotesques — partly derived
from Italy and partly based on the interpretation given to the
genre by the artists of the School of Fontainebleau — which
spread over the whole of northern Europe, including Holland,
England, North Germany, and Scandinavia. Half a generation
later the style was amplified by Hans Vredeman de Vries (1527-
after 1604), whose architectural and decorative engravings were
also widely studied.
During the religious struggles of the later sixteenth century
building naturally fell into abeyance, but under the Regency of
the Archduke Albert of Austria and his wife Isabella, daughter
of Philip I] of Spain, and particularly during the Twelve Year
Truce (1609-21), a revival took place in the economy of the
country which allowed a sudden flowering in intellectual,
religious. and artistic fields. This flowering was led by the
Jesuits, who were active in all these areas. Their enthusiastic
combating of heresy was accompanied by the creation of a
system of education far superior to any that existed in Flanders
at the time, and they were responsible for a high percentage of
the most important buildings put up during the seventeenth
century.
The greatest individual exponent of this movement was
Rubens, but in architecture a number of figures appeared who
combined elements of early seventeenth-century Italian styles —
not always very fully digested — with features, particularly in
planning, which were still derived from mediaeval traditions,
which survived so late in Flanders that the choir of St Jacques at
Antwerp was finished in 1656 in the Gothic style and immedi-
ately furnished with choir-stalls and pulpit which were fully
Baroque.
The first Flemish architect to import new ideas from Italy
was Wensel Cobergher (c. 1560-1634). originally trained as a
painter, who spent some twenty-four years in Naples and
Rome, returning in 1604 to Antwerp, which was the great
centre not only of commerce, but also of artistic activity in
Flanders. His church of the Carmelites in Brussels (1607) is a
competent version of contemporary Roman models, but when
he attempted to use more complicated plans, as at Notre-Dame
de Montaigu (1604) which is built on a heptagonal plan to
symbolize the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin, it was clear that he
could not work out a harmonious solution to the geometrical
problems involved. His church of the Augustinians at Antwerp
(finished in 1618) is important as an early example in Flanders
of a nave-arcade supported by Tuscan columns, a form which
was often to be repeated by later architects.
Like Cobergher his brother-in-law, Jacob Francart
206
144 Part II] Flanders, England and Holland
(1583-1651), was trained in Italy as a painter and returned to
Flanders in about 1608. Here he soon devoted his attention to
architecture. In 1616 he published a short treatise, the Premtier
Livre d’ Architecture, dedicated to the archduke, whose service
he had entered. It contains a series of engravings mainly of
architectural details, such as windows and doors, with a curious
mixture of Italian and local features, which were to exercise
considerable influence on later architecture in Flanders.
In his earliest church, built for the Jesuits in Brussels
(1616-21), he follows Cobergher’s scheme in the inferior,
though with taller arches and hinette windows, but both here
and in the later church of the Beguinage at Malines he makes an
innovation in the design of the fagade by dividing the lower
storey into five bays — three of which are continued into the
second storey — and then adding an attic, which creates an effect
of height quite foreign to Roman church facades of the period.
This pattern was followed, with the omission of the extra side-
bays, by Guillaume Hesius (1617-90) in the Jesuit church at
Louvain (1650-60). remarkable for the richness of its carved
decoration, both in the interior and on the facade.
The most important Flemish architect of the first half of the
seventeenth century was Pierre Huyssens (1577-1637). Unhke
Cobergher and Francart he was not trained in Italy, though he
spent two years in Rome when he was a man of fifty. One of his
most ambitious churches is that of Notre-Dame (begun 1629)
built for the Abbey of St Pierre at Ghent, which is unusual in
having a domed Greek-cross section as a nave, followed by a
long choir flanked by aisles. The arrangement brings the dome
very near to the west end of the church, so that tt ts seen in direct
relation to the fagade. In order to give 1t adequate support
visually, Huyssens designed the fagade with unnsually wide
proportions: a five-bay lower storey and a rather low upper
storey — without attic — which allows a full view of the drum and
cupola.
Huyssens’s most important works, however, were executed
for the Jesuit Order, which he joined at the age of twenty and for
which he built churches at Antwerp, Bruges, and Namur. His
enthusiasm for architecture was so great that it actually got him
202 Below left Antwerp, fagade of the Jesuil church by Huyssens and
Rubens, begun 1613
203 Above Antwerp, Jesuit church, intenor in a painting by W. von
Ehrenberg. Brussels, Musée des Beaux-Arts
204 Opposite Antwerp, Rubens’ house, courtyard and loggia, designed by
the arlisl
into trouble with his supertors, who ordered him to be trans-
ferred to a house where no building was taking place, presum-
ably so that he might devote himself wholly to his religious
duties. In the churches at Bruges (1619) and Namur (1621)
Huyssens follows the pattern set by Francart at the Beguinage
at Malines, except that in the former the fagade 1s much lower
and almost conforms to Roman models in its proportions. The
interior of St Loup at Namur is unusually rich in the treatment
of the surface: the columns are banded, the arches are inter-
rupted by raised voussoirs, and the barrel-vault — itself a
novelty in Flanders — 1s covered with cartouches and acanthus
decoration carved 1n relief on the stone.
In spite of the fact that 1t was gutted by fire in 1737, the Jesuit
church at Antwerp stands apart as the most splendid of all
seventeenth-century churches in Flanders, partly in the richness
of its materials and decoration, but also in the originality of its
design. Jn plan it is a simple basilica. with apses at the ends of
the nave and aisles, but in elevation it is unique among Flemish
churches of the period in having two superimposed arcades of
equal size, the upper of which covers a gallery. As in many
Jesuit churches, these galleries were to accommodate students
attending the college, and somewhat similar solutions to this
problem are to be found in many West and South German
Jesuit churches of the sixteenth century, though none of them
has the elegance and lightness of the Antwerp church.
The facade is unusual in its rich, carved decoration and its
broad proportions. The general disposition with five bays, three
wide and two narrow, on the lower storey is not unlike
Francart’s Béguinage church, but the storeys are kept lower,
and the width of the whole is increased by the addition of two
squat towers, set slightly back from the facade itself. The basic
plan of the fagade is related to that of Maderno’s S. Susanna in
that it breaks forward in three steps towards the centre, but the
203
tv
to
204
146 Part 111 Flanders, England and Holland
effect is made more complex — and perhaps less clear — than in
the Roman church by the fact that the architect breaks the
entablature over each column or pilaster and does not follow
Maderno’s method of increasing the plasticity of the Order
from pilasters to half-columns and columns as he approaches
the centre. The corners of the main facade are treated in an
unusual manner, with a full column coupled with a pilaster. The
combination of columns and pilasters has some parallels in
Italian sixteenth-century buildings, such as Antonio da
Sangallo the Elder's church of S. Biagio at Montepulciano, but
there the arrangement is reversed and the pilaster comes —
probably more logically — at the corner, outside the column.
The exact share of Huyssens in the designing and building of
the Jesuit church at Antwerp is difficult to determine. The
church was actually begun in 1613, but before that date a
number of projects had been submitted, some of a rather
fanciful type, but these had been rejected. The moving spirit in
the whole scheme was Father Francois Aguilon, then rector of
the college, who had an enthusiastic interest In architecture and
may have contributed to the working-out of the plan, but the
name of Huyssens appears in the document of the college with
the title architectus and there can be little doubt that he was in
charge of the buildings. It must be remembered. however, that
Rubens, who was a close friend of the Jesuits, was responsible
for the paintings which decorated the church — of which all but
three altarpieces were destroyed in the fire of 1737 — and 1s
known to have played a part in the designing of certain
architectural features.
Rubens spent the years 1600 to 1608 1n Italy and was in Rome
for the first two and most of the last three years of this period,
which overlapped the visits of Cobergher and Francart. He
would therefore have seen much the same monuments as his
two compatriots, but he was — as would be expected far more
sensitive to what he saw and interpreted it in a much more
imaginative way.
Rubens was not a practising architect and the only occasion
when he directed an actual structure in brick and stone was
when he added a wing and a loggia to his own house, which sul!
stands in Antwerp, heavily restored but recorded in seven-
teenth-century engravings. On the other hand it 1s clear from
the buildings which appear in his paintings that he was much
interested in architecture, and his designs for the title-pages of
books and, above all, for the temporary structures put up m
1635 for the entry of the Archduke Albert and the Archduchess-
Infanta Isabella into Antwerp (engraved in the volume called
Pompa Introitus) give evidence of real originality.
While Rubens was in Italy he devoted much time to studying
ancient Roman statues — and making drawings of them — and it
is safe to assume that he looked attentively at the remains of
ancient buildings. There is apparently only one case in which he
introduced an identifiable monument into one of his paintings —
the circular building in the background of the sketch for the S.
Ildefonso altarpiece in the Hermitage is taken from the so-
called Carceri near Capua — but he often drew on sixteenth-
century authorities, such as Serlio and Montano, for the
ancient monuments which he included in the settings of his
paintings. He also frequently used Salomonic columns, which
he saw in St Peter's many years before Bernini employed them
in the baldacchino.
He studied the works and designs of sixteenth-century archi-
tects. A plate in Serlio supplied him with the design for the
loggia in his garden, and the heavily rusticated columns in
many of his paintungs probably go back to the same source,
though Rubens could have scen actual examples of the device in
the works of Giulio Romano in Mantua and elsewhere. Some-
times he used buildings which were being worked on while he
was in Rome, such as Maderno’s aisles to St Peter's, the unusual
arches of which occur in one of his sketches for tapestries.
The most remarkable feature about Rubens’s use of Italian
architecture, however, is the degree to which he drew on
Michelangelo, above all from the late Roman works. For
instance, the base which Michelangelo designed for the statue of
Marcus Aurelius on the Capitol reappears in the pedestal
supporting the Virgin or allegorical figures in several of
Rubens’s compositions, and the type of door, with the upper
corners cut off diagonally, which Michelangelo invented for the
Porta Pia, was used by Rubens not only in many paintings, but
in the gate leading to the garden of his own house. He was also
clearly fascinated by Michelangelo’s combination of curved
and straight pediments in the Porta Pia. He took the elements
apart and put them together in new combinations — with the
205 Rubens, drawing for the high altar in the Jesui! church, Antwerp.
Vienna, Albertina
205
206
207
206 Louvain, former Jesuit church (now St Michel), top of the fagade, by
Hesius, 1650-60
curved element outside the straight. sometimes adding volutes
at each end of it. In an unexecuted design for the high altar of
the Jesuit church he not only used Salomonic columns and a
broken pediment, but the curved elements of the pediment form
S-curves, a device hinted at in the attic windows of the Porta Pia
but not generally used tll it was popularized by Andrea Pozzo
in the late seventeenth century. In fact Rubens did to Michel-
angelo what no Italian architect did before Borromini: he
absorbed the most revolutionary features of his late works and
transformed them into something new and highly personal.
In the works referred to above Rubens was moving towards a
personal syle which could be called Baroque avant la lettre, but
in some of the designs for the title pages he was even bolder and
introduced curved forms which are in advance of anything
being produced in Italy at the time.
Unfortunately his example was not followed and, generally
speaking, Flemish architecture of the second half of the seven-
teenth century is of litle interest. The most distinguished
building was Hesius Jesuit church at Louvain, of which the
facade has already been mentioned, but of which the interior 1s
also impressive for its lofty proportions — due to the insertion of
an attic over the entablature — and for the high quality of its
carved stone decoration. Hesius’ rival. Luc Faydherbe
(1617-97), was essentially a sculptor, and his Thurn and Taxis
Chapel in Notre-Dame-du-Sablon in Brussels is notable for
both its figure sculpture and its decorative detail, but his two
excursions into real architecture — the priory church of Lilien-
dael and Notre-Dame d*Hanswyck. both at Malines — were
clumsy in design and so unstable in structure that another
architect had to be called in to save them from collapsing.
The strangest phenomenon was the rebuilding of the Grand’
Place at Brussels after its destruction in the bombardment by
the French in 1695. The Guild Houses, which filled three sides
of it - the fourth being occupied by the Late Gothic Town Hall
—were such symbols of the city’s status that they were rebuilt in
207 Brussels, fagades of houses on the Grand’ Place, after 1695
forms which were basically those of the original sixteenth-
century houses, with the addition of certain details of figure-
sculpture and ornament in a more up-to-date style. This strange
manifestation of conscious conservatism, even of archaism, was
the swan-song of Flemish Baroque architecture.
But is Baroque the right word? In the case of Rubens, as has
been said above. there are many features of his architectural
designs which reveal him as a forerunner of the Baroque, but in
a sense it could be said that he was never really put to the test.
because he never designed and executed a complete building.
His contemporaries did, and if their works are examined on the
basis of a comparison with contemporary buildings in Rome. it
is difficult to escape the conclusion that they will be found
wanting. These architects showed no feeling for spatial in-
vention and were only at home with traditional late-mediaeval
plans: when they experimented with more complex forms, the
results were disastrous. They showed some skill in handling the
Roman Baroque form of church fagade and created a local
variant with an extra storey in the middle section. and they
enlivened the surface of these facades with vigorous — if
somewhat coarse — sculpture: but it cannot be said that they
made any real contribution to the main development of
Baroque architecture.
148 Part IIf Flanders, England and Holland
England
The Baroque style is primarily identified with absolute mon-
archy in politics and with Roman Catholicism in religion.
England was solidly Protestant throughout the period, and the
Catholic faith of Charles I's and Charles If’s queens and of
James 11 was entirely local in effect. Moreover, during the
seventeenth century the English monarchy changed from ab-
solute authority by Divine Right to power maintained by the
will of Parliament and an unwritten constitution. The social
climate was thus very different from that of those areas -
especially papal Rome — on which the definition of the style is
based. Other factors were temperament — the English distaste
for extremes — and the English Channel, which has always
provided both a measure of insulation from European ideas
and a means of seeing clearly and selectively what the Continent
has to offer. The English Baroque was, like the English Renais-
sance before it, an amalgam of 1deas adapted from Italy, France
and the Netherlands to the conditions. beliefs and tastes of
English society.!
Both political and artistic ideals changed rapidly during the
period, which may be divided into three phases. The first began
with the Restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660 after
Cromwell's short-lived republic and ended with the Glorious
(and bloodless) Revolution of 1688 in which James II was
succeeded by his nephew and son-in-law, William TI], and his
daughter Mary, as jot constitutional monarchs responsible to
Parliament and people. Subsequently artistic initiative passed
from the monarch to noblemen and nouveau riche commoners,
and in the decades either side of 1700 a number of great
Baroque houses were built for promment Whigs, members of
the party which accomplished the Revolution of 1688 and
secured the succession not of James II’s Catholic son but of the
Protestant Queen Anne (1702) and George I (1714).7 These two
phases overlapped with a third, which comprised the mature
and late work of Sir Christopher Wren between c. 1680 and c.
1710.
While some seventeenth-century patrons and architects had
personal knowledge of European architecture, travel was not
essential for the absorption of current tdeas. Of the principal
English Barogue architects only Thomas Archer (c. 1668-1743)
visited Italy; James Gibbs (1682-1754) reached London in 1709
by way of Carlo Fontana’s studio and soon recognized that
Baroque was not the school of the morrow: Wren (1632-1723)
only reached the Ile-de-France; Hugh May (1622-84) visited
Og
—
Holland and probably France; Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726)
stayed in the latter country mainly as a political prisoner:
Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661-1736) did not travel, and his
extensive knowledge of recent and ancient building was derived
entirely from books and engravings. Indeed by making avail-
able to architects disposed to use them a wide range of visual
sources, developments in reproductive engraving were the
biggest single factor in the establishment of the English Bar-
oque style.
It was only necessary for English architects and patrons to be
open to influence from abroad, and this disposition is more
evident by contrast with the situation after about 1715, the year
of Colen Campbell's neo-Palladian manifesto in the first vol-
ume of Vitruvius Britannicus, or the British Architect while the
plates of his elegant publication represented a mixture of
current styles, his title alluded to, and his mntroduction em-
phasized the veneration due to the work of the first English
Palladian, Inigo Jones, in contrast to the excesses of Bernini,
Rorromini and Fontana. In his Letter Concerning Design
circulated in manuscript about 1712,° the 3rd earl of Shaltes-
bury had predicted the emergence of a new national style,
without defining it except negatively as anti-French, anti-Wren
and anti-Baroque. Politically the reaction from contemporary
Europe received impetus from the union of England and
Scotland in 1707 and from growing disenchantment soon
afterwards with British involvement under Marlborough tn the
European war. Vitruvius Britannicus showed positively a direc-
tion and a range of visual references for the national style, and
made of the English Baroque period an interlude between the
era of Jones and that of his revival.
When Jones visited Rome in 1614 he annotated the accounts
of ancient buildings in his copy of Palladio’s Quattro Libri dell’
Architettura, and his taste in both painting and architecture
stopped short of late Mannerism and the art of the Carracei and
Maderno. As architect and artistic adviser to Charles | from
1625 he found much in common with that monarch’s taste for
Renaissance art.© The Whitehall Banqueting House, his first
mature work (1619-22), owes more to Palladio and indeed to a
building like Peruzzi’s Farnesina of the early sixteenth century
than to contemporary architecture, much as both the art
collections and the cultural ideals of Charles's court were
modelled on those of High Renaissance princes. In the 1630s
208 Greenwich Hospital, seen from the river terrace, by Wren, begun 1698.
The blocks nearer the river were designed by Webb, 1663-69
208
Jones's colossal portico at the west end of old St Paul's
Cathedral looked back directly and uncompromisingly to
ancient models (especially the Temple of Venus and Rome) and
not at all to Carlo Maderno’s new facade of St Peter's which he
must have noticed while in Rome. His project of c. 1638 for a
new Whitehall Palace. and later ones by his pupil John Webb
(1611-72). are based on the additive repetition of small units
which would have been tedious and lacking in monumentality. ’
The apparent simplicity of his buildings conceals a complexity
largely metaphysical and conceptual, concerned with numerical
harmonies and symbolisms. There was. however, another side
to Jones’s artistic activity: in stage design he used machinery as
well as painting and lighting to produce illusions and trans-
formations, and in comparison with other Baroque designers
he was limited only by the smallness of English court stages.®
Thus in 1642, when the outbreak of the Civil War interrupted
normal court life, the most modern architecture in the country
was stylistically about a century behind central and northern
Italy. By 1649 Webb conceived an unexecuted design for
Durham House in the Strand in terms of greater mass. larger
unit scale and the use of a giant Order. He first put them into
execution about 1654 in adding a giant portico to The Vyne
(Hampshire), where the order is a kind of primitive Corinthian
(without cauls) which reflects his and Jones's concern with
Vitruvius and the origins of architecture. Shortly after the
Restoration Webb was summoned from retirement to design a
new palace for Charles II at Greenwich. and in the only range
built he used his new formal language to greater effect. As the
only English architect of his time who was both talented and
professionally trained, he produced a design of distinction.
grandeur and meticulous finish. Although the vocabulary of
detail is derived from Palladio, both the scale and the overall
effect of the elevation relate unmistakeably to designs and
influences nearer Webb's own time. The use of a giant Order in
the centre and end sections with astylar intermediate sections
devoid of continuous verticals, makes a fagade which 1s read in
five larger units rather than in twenty-three bays. There 1s no
visible basement. the bases of the Order being at ground level:
this emphasizes the massiveness of the building, a feeling which
is reinforced by the large attics over the end sections. (In fact
these are too emphatic, being intended to be seen in relation
both to an identical range across the court and to the central]
range which was to be surmounted by a larger attic with a
central dome.)
In exile Charles I] had seen, in Paris and The Hague.
contemporary architecture and decoration on a grand scale.
including the Huis ten Bosch and recent work in the Louvre.
His own taste in the arts was broader and more worldly than his
father’s, and his expenditure, especially on architecture. was
considerable in spite of chronic financial difficulties. Had he
been richer, his court would have come closer 1n atmosphere
and achievement, if not to that of the Baroque popes, at least to
those of his cousins Louis XIV and the Medici grand dukes of
Tuscany. While his first Surveyor was Sir John Denham.
artistically a nonentity, the cynicism of this appointment from
expediency is moderated by his employment of both Webb and
Hugh May. and by his early recognition of the talents of Sir
Christopher Wren.? Greenwich was abandoned about 1669 ina
general retrenchment in the years after the Great Fire of
London, and Charles seems then also to have given up hope of a
new Palace of Whitehall, for which one of Webb's later draw-
ings 1s dated 1661. The extent of the king's personal concern
England 149
with Whitehall is shown by the incident in 1664 when he drew a
plan of the proposed palace for the diarist John Evelyn: Wren
appears to have been involved in that scheme.'® although he
held no official position in the King’s Works until 1669 when he
succeeded Denham over the heads of Webb and May, and
though he carried out no large-scale secular works until the
209 Windsor Casue, St George’s Hall by May, t682-84. decorated by
Antonio Verrio (destroyed)
1680s. Moreover in 1673 Charles appointed May. already since
1668 comptroller and thus second in command of the works, to
the separate post of surveyor at Windsor Castle. where over a
decade he created a Baroque palace of striking interior richness,
illusionism and, in some parts, formal ingenuity.
In the absence of drawings and personal records Hugh May
remains a mysterious though not an indistinct character.!? He
learned painting from Sir Peter Lely as well as acquiring
elsewhere an exact knowledge of architectural design and
practice. As servant to the 2nd duke of Buckingham before the
Restoration he visited Holland more than once. and in the early
1660s with the design of Eltham Lodge, Woolwich. he intro-
duced to England a kind of domestic Classicism which ts
specifically Dutch in its application of a giant pilaster frontis-
piece of stone or stucco to a brick elevation. and more loosely
and indirectly indebted to Palladian models. Significantly.
whereas in his Dutch prototypes such as the Mauritshuis. the
Order stands on a basement half-storey. in May's houses the
bases are at ground level as in Webb’s Greenwich building. At
Eltham also May experimented on a small scale with the spatial
possibilities of the staircase. At the second landing 1t divides
into two flights; one leads directly to the main upper floor while
the other leads to a large half-landing from which small flights
ascend to the main level.
May’s most important work was at Windsor Castle, where he
remodelled the upper ward and built new ranges of state rooms
for the king and queen, each approached by 1ts own staircase:
210A
209
210B
176
210C
150 © eattetgald
Flanders, England and Holland
210 A Eltham Lodge, staircase by May, 1663-64
B Windsor Castle, King’s Staircase, by May, 1675—79 (destroyed)
C Windsor Castle, Queen’s Staircase, by May, 1675-79 (destroyed)
most of this work disappeared in the making of the present state
apartments. His treatment of the exteriors involved the in-
sertion of deep round-headed windows which emphasized the
massiveness of the walls, provided a pattern of darkly sha-
dowed recesses, and gave the castle a neo-Norman air that was
appreciated in the next generation by Vanbrugh and Hawks-
moor. In the state rooms he supervised a team of artists and
craftsmen including the decorative painter Antonio Verrio and
the carver Grinling Gibbons. The illusionism of Windsor, 1n
which ceiling after ceiling opened into a painted sky, was closer
to Italian models, which May is unlikely to have seen, than to
French ones. The two biggest and grandest rooms, in which
walls as well as ceiling were painted in trompe-/ ceil, were the
Chapel and St George's Hall. The whole decoration of the Hall
was based on the Order of the Garter, and the dominant colours
were the silver, blue and crimson of the Garter costume. In the
Chapel carving was added to painting, and an illusionist
tableau of the Last Supper in a fictive niche was painted behind
the altar.!¢
The King’s Staircase, which consisted of symmetrical diverg-
ing lower flights with converging ones above, suggests that May
knew of the staircases of Le Vau, such as the Escalier des
Ambassadeurs at Versailles (begun 1671) or that in an unexe-
cuted design for the Louvre (1667). The Queen’s Staircase was
more complex: three consecutive flights rose around a square
cage articulated by a fictive architecture of pilasters with statues
in niches and bas reliefs. In the wall above the middle flight a
window looked into a further staircase, also painted in trompe-
Voeil. The compound of real and illusionist spaces in the main
staircase was top-lit by a wooden lantern resting on pendent-
ives. Both staircases were destroyed before 1800 and their
spatial effect, the loss of which is the most regrettable in all
May’s work, can only be imagined from plans and descriptions.
The great stair built by Wren at the south end of the Whitehall
Banqueting House in 1686 and destroyed by fire in 1698 was an
unpainted version of the Queen’s Staircase; it provided for the
only time in its history a worthy entry to Jones’s great room.
Wren’s only comparable work in the fusion of painting,
sculpture and architecture was designed after May's death: the
Catholic chapel built at Whitehall for James I] in 1685-86 and
also destroyed in 1698. Evelyn's famous diary entry in Decem-
ber 1686 describes the painting of Verrio, the carving of
Gibbons and Quellin in the great marble altar screen, the rich
vestments and the Italian music with an equal mixture of
artistic enthusiasm and religious outrage. Wren was not by
nature a decorator, and considered architecture a sterner, more
abstracted and less transitory affair. Neither his sympathy with
European Baroque nor its influence on him was constant,
although, as his style passed from the equivalent of the early
Renaissance to that of his contemporary Carlo Fontana, his
later work in general is more justifiably identified as Baroque.
Until his thirtieth year Sir Christopher Wren’s career was
that of a post-Baconian sceptical scientist especially interested
in geometry and astronomy.!? Yet from childhood he drew and
made models, and the wide interests of his father, who had been
dean of Windsor, included building if not architecture. When in
an unsuccessful attempt to engage him in the fortification of
Tangier in 1661 Charles I] offered Wren the reversion of the
surveyorship, the king was perhaps aware of the young geo-
metrician’s true potentialities. By 1665, with university build-
ings to his credit and the future of St Paul’s on his mind, Wren
was involved enough in architecture to spend some months in
France; with introductions to Francois Mansart and Bernini,
the experiencing of modern architecture at first hand was
probably the primary purpose of his visit. The destruction of
London in the Great Fire a few months after his return gave
him unique opportunities and the surveyorship in 1669 sealed
his career. Through the work of the next four decades and his
fragmentary writings run the threads of a belief in the rational
beauty of mathematical absolutes and an equal concern for the
visual effect of architecture.'+ This duality is part of the general
to
ws
tw
tu
—
la
seventeenth-century dilemma between Classical and Baroque.
but in Wren the varving balance produced on occasion works in
which the solid geometry of architecture is especially apparent.
The exterior of St Paul's (begun 1675) is visually striking as
well as intellectually powerful, but not emotionally exciting:
Wren distrusted “Fancy or imagination, which ‘blinds the
Judgement’. His use of relief. of the grant Order. of illusion. and
in his later years of plasticity of modelling, show a familiarity
with European architecture and at times a sympathy beyond
the limits of his first-hand knowledge. St Paul's 1s modelled.
grooved, textured and enlivened with naturalistic carving in a
manner that is French rather than Baroque. In the transept
ends. however, in about 1680. Wren’s favourite device of a
decorative frieze at the level of the capitals is continued without
a break into pilasters enriched with similar relief. so that
individual parts of the elevation and distinctions between them
are blurred and the eye is encouraged to read the whole unit as
indivisible. In the towers (after 1704). as in some of the later
steeples of his post-Fire churches (especially St Vedast.,
1694-97). the Borrominesque play of concave and convex is the
more remarkable in that his sources were confined to engrav-
ings. Characteristically, however. some apparent curves in the
Western towers are composed of short straight lines, and the
design was evolved deliberately as a foil to the dome. Wren
often cheated the eye: at Hampton Court (begun 1689). as
earlier in his most Classical building, Trinity College Library,
Cambridge (1676-84), internal convenience required the prin-
cipal floor inside to be lower than the apparent external storey-
division, and in both buildings the difference 1s concealed
behind the filled-in tympana of the cloister arches. St Paul’s has
an outer dome of leaded timber tall enough to mde over the
whole City, and a considerably lower inner one of masonry
concordant with the dimensions of the crossing; a hidden
intermediate brickwork cone supports the lantern. By raising
the aisle walls through two storeys Wren screened both the
basilican clerestorv and his buttressing system: the screen walls.
which contain niches instead of windows, make a visual] mass
adequate for the dome above them. and also disguise the
relation in scale between exterior and interior. Characteristic-
ally again the screens contribute structurally to the abutment of
the dome. By adding projecting chapels at the west end and
making a corresponding extra large western bay within. Wren
managed to combine the long Latin-cross nave of his brief with
the impression of a nave and choir each of three bays and thus
of a symmetrical. though longitudinal. building with a central
domed space.!*
Wren's constant aesthetic problem was to reconcile the
absolute scale of parts to whole in a building with the relative
scale of man. The Great Model for St Paul's (1673-74) was
rejected on religious grounds, as too far in plan from the
mediaeval tradition of Latin-cross cathedrals. too close in
design to St Peter’s in Rome and such intermediate designs as
Mansart's project for a Bourbon mausoleum (which Wren may
have seen in Paris), and also on practical grounds because a
structure consisting mainly of adome could not be completed in
instalments. The High Renaissance purity of the Great Model ts
on a Baroque scale: the first horizontal moulding would have
been above eye level and the second one over twelve feet from
the street. In the 1680s, at Chelsea Hospital! and the unfinished
palace at Winchester, Wren failed to integrate the domestic
scale of the fenestration with the giant-Order frontispieces
called for by the size of the layout. At Hampton Court, where
England 151
he settled for two adjacent wings giving the illusion of a palace
approaching Versailles in extent, he was finally able to assi-
milate the Janguage of Bernini's last design for the Louvre
which he had seen and ‘would have given my skin for’ in 1665.
But formal invention was limited by Wilham and Mary s desire
for an economical and speedy English Versailles. and Hampton
Court depends largely, like its prototype, on area and decor-
ation to convey the greatness of monarchy. In the Fountain
Court the upper windows are framed by the lion-skins of 211
Hercules. with whom Wilham II] identified himself more
consistently than did his French cousin: although he was the
first constitutional king of England William understood and
accepted the function of monarchy and the role of the arts in its
support.
In 1698 Whitehall Palace burned down leaving little besides
Jones's Banqueting House. Wren produced on paper schemes
in which the giant Order is used so liberally that the scale of
Jones's building ts sacrificed to it, and the many varied blocks
are interesting both individually and in their interrelation.’° In
the sailors’ hospital at Greenwich (founded by William and
Mary in 1694 to outshine Charles II's Chelsea for soldiers)
Wren was obliged to incorporate another building by Jones, the
Queen’s House. as well as Webb's unfinished palace. In thus
designing a building without a middle he nevertheless suc-
ceeded in a combination of scales. a variety of masses and. in the
Painted Hall decorated by Sir James Thornhill (1708-12). the 216
finest successor to May's Windsor interiors. In the side courts
there is much firmer evidence for the free participation of
Hawksmoor, Wren’s assistant. than in the towers of St Paul's or
the designs for Whitehall or Hampton Court.
Thornhill’s ceiling honours not the monarch but Britannia.
and at the Revolution of 1688 the artistic prerogatives of
monarchy were already passing with the political prerogatives
of power to the Whig nobility. In 1687 the 4th earl (]st duke) of
Devonshire began to rebuild Chatsworth. His architect was
William Talman (1650-1719). who had probably been a pupil
211 Hampton Court Palace, the Fountain Court. by Wren, 1689-92
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of May and who, like Webb at Greenwich, divided his elevation
into masses rather than separate bays; the unusual even number
of bays eliminates a central division.!’ In contrast to the high
pitched roofs of previous great houses Chatsworth, designed
two years before Hampton Court, has the silhouette of the
Italian palazzo; it is hardly accidental that Devonshire was one
of the group which invited William and Mary to the throne. In
interior decoration also, although it was not the first private
house to have illusionist decorative painting, Chatsworth
assumed royal standards, and the chapel is a scaled-down
version of May’s at Windsor. As the timing of Talman’s work at
Thoresby is uncertain — it was burned down on completion and
rebuilt — the south range of Chatsworth may be his first major
work. He ts not known to have travelled, but he had consider-
able knowledge of French and Dutch architecture, and de-
veloped an interest, inherited from May and ultimately from
France, in the use of oval rooms. Talman built up a consider-
able country house practice in the 1690s, often using his own
team of craftsmen as May and, in France, Le Vau had done.
However, his arrogance gradually lost him commissions includ-
ing the completion of Chatsworth. By 1700 the court style
which early in the century had led the country at some distance
J94
was overtaken as a result of changes both in the politics and in
the economy of England; the vogue for ceiling painting had
temporarily displaced plasterwork in great houses, while the
architectural innovations of Chatsworth were widely appreci-
ated and adapted.
The three most important successors to Chatsworth were
Hawksmoor’s Easton Neston (Northamptonshire), Van-
brugh’s and Hawksmoor’s Castle Howard (Yorkshire), and
Archer’s Heythrop. The last of these (begun c. 1706) was built
for the duke of Shrewsbury, who had lived in Rome; only the
exterior of the main block survives. Archer crowned the Italian-
ate silhouette and giant Order with an entablature of Bernin-
212 Left London, St Paul's Cathedral by Wren, from the south-east,
1675-1710
213 Below St Paul’s, detail of the Phoenix at the south transept end by
Caius Gabriel Cibber, 1699. The Phoenix symbolizes rebuilding after the
Great Fire of 1666
214 Bottom St Paul's, section and plan
215 Opposite St Paul's, the north-west tower
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216 Top Greenwich Hospital, the Painted Hall by Wren, begun 1698,
decorated by Thornhill, |
4bove Kimbolton Castle by Vanbrugh, 1708~10, the east front, portico
by Alessandro Galilei,
esque proportions, while much of the detail was derived from
Roman Baroque originals, through the first volume of Rossi's
Studio d’Architettura Civile (1702-21) rather than directly.!®
Nevertheless Archer’s literal use of contemporary sources was
exceptional, and in the garden pavilion at Wrest Park he
provides a text-book example of a building whose appearance
changes from different angles. Its plan is a circle within a
hexagon, and alternate faces present a concave and convex
aspect. In his two London churches, St Paul, Deptford
(1712-30) and St John, Smith Square (1713-29, twice burnt
out but restored in 1968 to its original appearance) he used full
columns to dramatize his interiors. The exteriors again show a
geometrical sympathy with architects such as Fischer von
Erlach, although the vocabulary of detail derives mainly from
Wren and Vanbrugh (for example cannon balls on the exterior
of St John). Archer also carried out, and modified, a design for
the south front of Wentworth Castle made by the Huguenot
Jean Bodt.!? Bodt, who worked mainly in Berlin, was one of
several] foreign architects who visited England in the late-
seventeenth or early-eighteenth century, including Daniel
Marot, who made designs for William and Mary.”° Fischer von
Erlach, who intended to come in 1704-5, and Juvarra, who
e20
came in |720. were perhaps attracted by the completion of St
Paul's. Alessandro Galilei was in England in 1714-19. made
designs for a royal palace and for churches, but carried out only
one building, the Doric east portico at Vanbrugh’s Kimbolton
Castle (1719).2! Like his later facade to the Lateran in Rome.
Galilei’s structure overtops the building behind tt.
Foreign craftsmen were adaptable to the English situation: in
the early-eighteenth century they included many plasterers who
worked in buildings which cannot themselves be called either
Baroque or. in the 1730s, Rococo. One of the finest as well as
most interesting is the hall at Moor Park, Herts. Sir James
Thornhill’s enlargement of the Caroline house for the nouveau
riche Benjamin Styles (c. 1725-28) included a new stone exterior
with a giant portico and the decoration of the interior. After
legal disputes in 1728 and 1730 between Thornhill and Styles
the latter employed Venetian painters to redecorate the in-
terior: in the hall new canvases by Jacopo Amigoni were
inserted into Thornhill’s scheme of painting and plaster relief.*-
Such plasterwork may properly be called Rococo, but in
England. as in Ireland where many plasterers worked in the
eighteenth century, the term applies to details rather than to
ensembles.23 The style continued until the advent of neo-
“ reseegens ** pentegeen’®- seeneneeg : o
ee SE ee es
218 Top Easton Neston by Hawksmoor, completed 1702, west front
219 Above Chatsworth, the south front by Talman, 1687-89
156 Part IJ] Flanders, England and Holland
220 Below London, St John, Smith Square, by Archer, 1713-29
221 Bottom London, St Mary Woolnoth by Hawksmoor, 1716-27, interior
222 Right Wrest Park, the pavilion by Archer
ahhh a i
ene
Classical decoration about 1760, and the “Chinese Room at
Claydon ts actually after 1769.
The two greatest wholly Baroque English architects, Hawks-
moor and Vanbrugh, were contrasting and complementary
figures. Hawksmoor was a pupil of Wren and, next to Webb,
the best trained professional of his century.** By about 1690 he
was undertaking commissions of his own while continuing to
assist his master in the Royal Works and at Greenwich and St
Paul’s. By 1699 he had formed an unofficial partnership with
Vanbrugh, a soldier and writer of comedies with no experience
in architecture but with boundless imagination and the deter-
mination to succeed which underlies the professionalism of his
later years. Initially Vanbrugh needed not only Hawksmoor’s
knowledge, experience and draughtsmanship but, to a very
large extent, his style.?°
Hawksmoor’s design for Christ's Hospital Writing School of
1692 shows a preoccupation with bare surfaces, large masses
and round arches which derives rather from Wren’s remarks
about the geometrical basis of his art than from his practice.
The exterior of Easton Neston (c. 1695—1702), however, com-
bines the silhouette of Chatsworth, the texture of Wren, and
Hawksmoor’s personal preference for closely spaced giant
pilasters along the main fronts. Inside the house, changes of
room height and orientation offer a sequence of spatial sur-
prises, culminating in the staircase, nearly half the length and
the full height of the house and at right angles to the upper and
lower galleries which it connects. The dimensions of the steps
223 Opposite Blenheim Palace, the saloon, c. 1720
221
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enforce on the visitor a very slow pace. and the great end
window illuminates the stair as one faces inwards but in the
reverse direction presents an almost tangible glare.
Hawksmoor’s greatest opportunity coincided with the great-
est project for public architecture of the early eighteenth
century, the Commission of 171] for building the Fifty New
Churches in London and the suburbs. The inspiration of these
buildings was partly political, and their grandeur and promin-
ent siting were monuments to the Tory government of 1710-14
and to Queen Anne as well as to the High Church party with-
in the Church of England. As one of two permanent surveyors to
the Commission Hawksmoor saw the execution of six of his
designs, or half the number of churches actually built. (Two
others were by Archer.) All six are planned on axes intersecting
at right angles, with various combinations of cruciform, square
and rectangular shapes. At St George-in-the-East, which was
burnt out in 1941 and rebuilt in a different internal form, the
224 Opposite top Chatsworth, from the north-west, by Talman and others,
1687-1702
225 Opposite bottum Vienna, garden facade of the Upper Belvedere by
Hildebrandt, 1721-22
226 Above left Moor Park enlarged by Thornhill. c. 1725-28, the hall with
paintings by Jacopo Amigoni, c. 1730
227 Above right Claydon House, the “Chinese Room’ decorated by Luke
Lightfoot(?), 1769
228 Right Easton Neston by Hawksmoor, c. 1695-1702, the staircase
160 Part II] Flanders, England and Holland
main space consisted of a vaulted Greek cross within a square,
with flat ceilings in the corners; to this were added what
Hawksmoor called ‘wings’ at the west, containing a gallery, and
at the east containing the pulpit and opening into an apse. Since
the gallery continued along the north and south sides of the
main space there was considerable ambiguity between the
formal and functional basis of the plan; this is a feature of all
Hawksmoor’s churches which he exploited to induce feelings of
awe in the beholder. Even in St Mary Woolnoth the logic of the
plan (a square within a square) was originally complicated by
the presence of galleries on three sides. Later, in the circular
Mausoleum at Castle Howard (begun 1729) Hawksmoor used
indirect lighting and such irrational elements as full columns
partly embedded in the wall to achieve an unnerving effect. In
his church exteriors he developed both the bold use of plain
prismatic surfaces and arcades to recall the gravity of Ancient
—
229 Right London, St George-in-the-East by Hawksmoor, 1714-29
230 Below Castle Howard by Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor, from the north
as intended (engraving 1725), built 1700-1712 withont the forecourt and
wesl wing.
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Rome (which he never saw) and an individual vocabulary of
plastic forms rich in evocative quotations from Antique,
Mannerist and even Gothic detail. The octagonal lantern of St
George-in-the-East re-interprets in straight lines the lanterns of
Borrominl, as well as the shape of certain mediaeval English
ones, while the draped finials derive from Roman cylindrical
altars. The multiple mouldings. exaggerated keystones and ear-
like projections of the side doorcases derive, complex in al-
lusion but simplified in cutting, from the Michelangelesque
tradition of architectural metaphor.
At Castle Howard (1700-12) and Blenheim (1705-25)
Hawksmoor assisted Vanbrugh as draughtsman, detailer and
administrator: in both exteriors Wren’s French-inspired sur-
face found its final expression. Castle Howard was built for the
Whig 3rd earl of Carlisle, who left politics to develop. as a moral
duty, forestry. agriculture and state living on his Yorkshire
estates. It was intended to eclipse Chatsworth in the approp-
231 Left Grimsthorpe Caste, the hal! by Vanbrugh, 1723-26
232 Below Blenheim Palace, by Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor, north front,
1705-16
162. Part I] Flanders, England and Holland
SRS
|
|
233 Blenheim Palace, the hall, 1705-10
riation of the court style; Vanbrugh raised the hall into a tall
dome, opened arches between the hall and its flanking stair-
cases, and engaged the Venetian Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini
to paint, and the Italian stuccoists Bagutti and Plura to model,
in Strictly limited fields. He exploited the corridor, a rather new
feature of house design, for its perspective chiaroscuro. Castle
Howard in consequence combines decoration and architecture
with more emphasis on the latter than in Talman’s and May’s
painted interiors.
Blenheim Palace, the nation’s gift to the victorious duke of
Marlborough, is a peculiarly English Baroque monument: both
Marlborough and his chosen architect considered it an imper-
sonal commemoration of the deed, not the doer.”° In finishing it
after Marlborough’s death in 1722, however, his widow altered
its meaning to a personal monument to the duke. Blenheim
inevitably became the focus of attacks, from Shaftesbury
onwards, on what soon came to be considered a foreign style.
lis imagery is that of Versailles and its language is one of
complex rhythms and textures, large scale and rich three-
dimensional modelling both in main masses and in Hawks-
moor’s details; in all this, and in such eccentricities as the
broken and stepped-back pediment over the entrance, it sus-
tains comparison, in the international phase of Baroque, with
major works of Fischer von Erlach and Juvarra.
Blenheim became involved, still unroofed, in the Marlbor-
oughs temporary disfavour in the last years of Queen Anne,
and in 1716 Vanbrugh resigned in disagreement with the
duchess; Hawksmoor was solely responsible (1722-25) for the
Long Library or gallery on the west side and some of the state
rooms on the south front. The hall ceiling was painted by
Thornhill and the Saloon, with more than a glance at the
exterior architecture, by Louis Laguerre.
One source of Blenheim’s exuberant skyline is the neo-
mediaevalism of Shakespeare's England.*? By 1708 Vanbrugh
had taken this revival of a revival a stage further, in remodelling
Kimbolton Castle in what he called ‘the Castle air’; ten years
later he was building for hts own use a more explicit Castle,
small but tall and towered, at Greenwich, and designing in
Seaton Delaval (1720-28) a house much smaller than Blenheim,
more concentrated in its romantic variety of masses and turrets,
in which plain surfaces and Italian Renaissance window detail
replace the liberal use of the giant Order and rich texture. The
appearance from 1715 of Campbell's three Vitruvius Britan-
nicus Volumes and Leont’s translation of Palladio made positive
what had been the negative image of Shaftesbury’s predicted
national style and put the Baroque, which had owed its exis-
tence to the enthusiasm of individual architects and patrons,
out of fashion.?® Increasing although highly personal use was
made of Palladio both by Hawksmoor and by Vanbrugh, who
had for long held the Quattro Libri in authority. In the hall at
Grimsthorpe (1723-26) in which the blind arcade motif of the
side walls is transformed into double open screens at the ends,
Vanbrugh demonstrated with remarkable economy and
imagination the justice of his belief that he could have supplied
Shaftesbury’s prescription had Campbell not forestalled him.
PBN
tv
Holland
The political separation of the Netherlands from Flanders,
although not ratified until the Peace of Munster (1648), was
effectively recognized by the twelve-year truce of 1609. There-
after the United Provinces. with the Princes of Orange as
hereditary Stadholders, were both independent of Spanish rule
and, although predominantly Protestant, unusually open for
the seventeenth century to religious toleration. Many Dutch
artists visited Rome. but in both theory and practice their
borrowings from Italy were selective.’ As a young painter about
1630 Rembrandt professed to be able to see enough Italian art
at home and too busy to travel. a contention which is supported
by his subsequent understanding of, and adaptations from.
Renaissance art. Jacob van Campen (1595-1657) went to
Rome, an undistinguished painter, and turned to architecture.
Like Inigo Jones he seems to have looked in Italy at Renais-
sance rather than contemporary buildings. His domestic work
of the 1630s. such as the Mauritshuts in The Hague, owes more
to France in the use of pilasters and a high-hipped roof than it
does to Palladio and Scamozzi in details, but van Campen’s
generation was the first in Holland to appreciate Renaissance
architecture three-dimensionally rather than as the application
of pseudo-antique detail to individual fagades. In the former
Town Hall of Amsterdam (now Royal Palace), begun 1648, van
Campen fused the direct and indirect (via France) influence of
Italy to produce classical rhythm, restraint and purity of line
and detail. but on an overwhelming scale. The Town Hall can
be called Baroque in its scale and also in the complex relation of
the themes and forms of its decoration both to the mercantile
prestige of the city in a Europe pacified at Munster (in the year
of its foundation) and to the various formal encounters between
the individual and the civic body.
Dutch architects experimented with centralized churches
both for their geometry and for their compactness in accom-
modating a congregation, but as settings for the severity of
Calvinist workshop their interiors (e.g. van Campen’s New
Church, Haarlem in the 1640s) are simple and sparsely de-
corated.? The Huis ten Bosch outside The Hague, begun in 1645
by van Campen’s pupil Pieter Post for the Stadholder. encloses
a cruciform domed hall and is perhaps distantly related to
Palladio’s Villa Rotonda: after 1649, however, the hall was
entirely decorated by Jacob Jordaens and other Flemish and
Dutch painters as a memorial to Prince Frederick Henry. ina
decorative scheme which is unparalleled in the Netherlands
either in its illusionism or in its courtly programme. Other
‘palaces’ were merely substantial town or country houses.*
Jn the later seventeenth century public buildings reflected the
grandeur of the Amsterdam Town Hall and the taste and the
technique developed there for sculptural decoration, rhetorical
in intention and often brilliant in execution, that directly
influenced English art in particular. Louis X]V’s revocation of
the Edict of Nantes in 1685 drove many Huguenot craftsmen
from France: of those who settled in Holland the most import-
ant was Daniel Marot (1661-1752) who became architect to
William 111 of Orange and England. Marot was above all a
designer of ornament, and on the strength of his use of French
detail his architecture is called Baroque by the Dutch.° lroni-
cally, the nation which had resisted French territorial ambition
in the 1670s became at the end of the century, culturally
speaking, a French province.
Holland 163
234 Amsterdam, Royal Palace (former Town Hall) by Jacob van Campen,
begun 1648
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Part IV
Central and Eastern Kurope
Introduction
The present division of Europe into an East and West, virtually
coinciding with the division between peoples of Mediterranean
or German. and Slav or Magyar stock has helped to efface the
memory of an earlier Europe in which there was an equally
important distinction between North and South, deriving from
acceptance or repudiation of the Reformation. Central Europe
in the sixteenth century embraced both these divisions. Its
territories comprised the innumerable sovereign states of
Germany and autonomous cantons of Switzerland — variously
Catholic, Lutheran or Calvinist — on the one hand, and on the
other the Slavonic and Magyar lands of Poland, Bohemia, and
Hungary, whose common feature was that each had an elective
monarchy. Presiding by ancient right over the Germanic parts
of this territory (save the Swiss cantons, whose de facto inde-
pendence had been recognized in 1499) was the emperor, heir to
the hybrid Carolingian claim to be both successor to the
emperors of Rome and elected head of their Germanic sup-
planters. Since 1438 this title had been held continuously by the
Habsburg dynasty. which with time also succeeded in convert-
ing its originally elective rule over Bohemia and Hungary into a
permanency, like that over the Empire itself.’
]n the seventeenth century an attempt was made to challenge
this Habsburg claim to automatic succession to the Empire. In
1619 one of the seven electors — four sovereign princes and three
sovereign archbishops — then entitled to elect the emperor, the
ruler of the Palatine Frederick V, attempted to thwart the
candidature of Archduke Ferdinand, whilst engineering his
own election as king of Bohemia by its largely Protestant
nobility. The archduke defeated these manoeuvres, being crow-
ned as the Emperor Ferdinand ]) at Frankfurt and wresting
back Bohemia from Frederick after the Battle of the White
Mountain (1620). Ferdinand, who had already embarked on
the extirpation of Protestantism from his original archduchy of
Styria, followed up this victory with the ruthless dispossession
of all the Protestant-inclined nobility in Bohemia and Moravia,
and the substitution of a new, Catholic and loyal nobility in its
stead. Alarmed both for their religion and for their inde-
pendence, the Protestant sovereigns of Germany had banded
together in self-defence. Denmark, Sweden, Spain and France
entered the fray. and the Thirty Years War was set on its bloody
and destructive course.
The Thirty Years War had a catastrophic effect upon the arts
in Germany. There was not only the destruction, depopulation
and diversion of resources from patronage to warfare, but the
havoc wrought upon civil life, and upon the life of the guilds in
particular. The exacerbation of the antagonism between Cath-
olic and Protestant, which had already dealt a blow to the
reciprocity of guild life at the Reformation, combined with the
hazards of travel to make impossible the old system of learning
through Wanderschaft (going as a journeyman from city to city.
wherever there was work). The fortunate practitioners of more
transportable skills like painting or sculpture were sometimes
able to work abroad, in Italy (like Carl Loth in Venice, or
Heinrich Schonfeld in Naples) or in the Netherlands (where
Joachim von Sandrart settled after living in Rome). Those who
might have wished to practise building or the building-related
arts, like stucco-work or fresco-painting (with the exception of
guadraturisti like the Schors and Haffners) had no such tradi-
tions of travel or acceptance abroad to fall back on.
Stucco and fresco were anyway. as their names suggest.
Italian imports. and they were associated with a mode of
architecture that was itself of Italian origin. The prestige of
Italian Renaissance architecture had already led to the direct
emplovment of Italians at various places in Central Europe.’
Trading relations between the Free Cities of the Empire and
Italy were close (whence the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice
and the early receptivity to Italian forms in Augsburg. Nurem-
berg. and Cologne) and intermarriage between the sovereigr.s
of Central Europe and the princely houses of Italy was aot
infrequent. Hence the marriage of Matthias Corvinus. king of
Hungary. and Beatrice of Aragon-Naples (1476) helped to
promote the remarkably early erection of buildings by IJtalians
in the purest Florentine Quattrocento style in Buda and Vise-
grad. The enthusiastic reception given to Italian art and artists
in Hungary was exceptional, and was anyway cut short by the
loss of the central part of the country to the Turks for a century
and a half after 1541, but isolated monuments elsewhere
resulted from similar invitations to Italian craftsmen. In Poland
King Sigismund I, who had spent his early life at the Hungarian
court, and whose second wife was to be Bona Sforza, invited
Bartolomeo Berrecci from Florence in 1516 to build a maus-
oleum to his first wife beside Cracow Cathedral (1519-33). In
Bavaria. immediately after being deeply impressed by a state
235 Overleaf left Munich, Ahnengalerie in the Residence, wall decoration
designed by Effner. ceiling by Cuvilliés. 1726-30
236 Overleaf right Melk, loges inserted in the abbey church (built by Jakob
Prandiauer 1702-14) by Beduzzi in the nave gallery
mt,
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visit to his Gonzaga relatives in Mantua (1536). Duke Ludwig
X built a new palace within the city of Landshut directly
inspired by what he had seen, and with the aid of builders sent
from Mantua (1537-43).In Bohemia, Benedict Ried’s idiosyn-
cratic adoption (via Hungary) of Renaissance detail on the
Vladislav Hall (c. 1500) was followed after his death by the
Emperor Ferdinand I's invitation to Comasque masons to
build the Belvedere overlooking the Castle at Prague (1534-41).
Here. for the first time, we encounter a major work of archi-
tecture (significantly indebted to Serlio’s treatise) erected by
the migrant Italians who were to be instrumental in popular-
izing Renaissance forms and techniques throughout southern
Central Europe. and who were to make up for the lack of native
artists caused by the breakdown of the guild system during the
Thirty Years War.7 These Comasques came from a small group
of villages round Lake Como, in which there was a long
237 Opposite Stadl-Paura. Church of the Trinily by Johann Michael
Prunner, 1714-25
238 Below Vienna. grille by Arnold and Konrad Kuffner lo the Upper
Belvedere buill by Hildebrandt, 172]—22
Introduction 169
tradition of adopting masonry as a profession and of using this
skill to migrate and find a living away from a barely cultivable
homeland, whilst returning there when possible to marry or to
retire. Though several of them learnt to practise other arts.
particularly that of fresco (and, indeed. their ability to provide a
team of craftsmen was one of the factors 1n their success), their
main skills were as masons and stonemasons, from which
stemmed their guite novel specialization — stucco-work. The
particular asset of this skill was that, being a new art, not merely
did its practitioners face no native competitors, but it also lay
outside the traditional demarcations and regulations of the
local guilds. Revived in direct imitation of such Roman work as
that found in the Golden House of Nero, it was at first the
preserve of artists like Perino del Vaga. Giovanni da Udine and
Federico Brandani. It was the Comasques who, by the latter
part of the sixteenth century, were combining the practice of
stucco-work with their jobs as masons. a combination of
activities subsequently adopted to a greater or lesser extent by
the later clans of peripatetic masons. the Graubundeners and
the Vorarlbergers.
The Comasques migrated not only northwards: the Rovio
branch of the Carlones flourished as painters and sculptors in
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Genoa, whilst the building trade at Rome recruited heavily
from Como. Several achieved the status of architects, notably
the Fontanas, Carlo Maderno and Borromini. North of the
Alps, though none but Santini Aichel achieved such artistic
stature, more probably found employment. There they bene-
fited from the innate prestige of Italian architecture, and from
their mastery of the unfamiliar techniques of stucco and the
bastion method of fortification. The political state of Ger-
many, and the mnevitable slowness of the native guild system in
adjusting to a new architectural mode that placed a strong
reliance on plaster vaults and mouldings in place of the Gothic
reliance on stonemasonry, weakened native competition. (This
was not the case with roof-carpentry, where there was no such
break with tradition, so that Germans continued to surpass —
according to Boffrand — even the French.) Finally, the Welsche,
as they were called (the word originally just meant foreigners,
but came to be restricted to Italians) helped one another
through their intense clannishness, which at times threatened to
exclude Germans from employment tn their own country. Thus
the same names — e.g. Carlone, Spazio, d’Allio, or Castelli —
constantly recur, even over several centuries, whilst intermarri-
age maintained solidarity. This was in no way different from the
dynastic tendencies prevailing amongst German craftsmen, but
whereas these dominated a single city or locality, the Com-
asques were usually mobile, moving and inviting their com-
patriots to any place where work was to be found. It was no
accident that, when the Italians began to be displaced from the
southern Empire towards the end of the seventeenth century, it
was by Germans with similar roots in remote village commun-
ities, and similar mobility.
The Empire had one distinguishing characteristic that made
this kind of mobility particularly valuable; it was composed of
innumerable sovereign entities — reichsfreie (Imperial Free)
territories, ranging from those ruled by dukes and margraves,
prince-bishops and prince-abbots, to Imperial Free Cities, and
to some lands no bigger than a manor ruled by reichsfreie
counts or knights. None but the largest states amongst these —
Austria, Bavaria, Prussia, or Saxony — could provide assured
and continued employment for architects, and even in these
much depended upon the personal proclivities of the prince —
there were no great opportunities under Frederick William 1 of
239 Wurzburg, pilgrimage-church of the Kippele by Neumann 1748ff.
Prussia, or Maria Theresa of Austria. The Imperial Free Cities,
which had accounted for some of the finest Late Gothic and
Early Renaissance architecture, never recovered sufficiently
from the shift in oriental trade from the Mediterranean to the
Atlantic seaboard, or from the Thirty Years War. to become a
significant source of patronage. The lesser reichsfreie nobles,
who were concentrated in Swabia. Franconia and tn the Rhine-
land, where no one dynasty had succeeded in establishing itself
as a successor to the Carolingian dukedoms — rarely had the
resources to build. This still left the major sovereign princes.
both lay and ecclesiastical. and in the Catholic south, the
greater abbeys. whether reichsfrei, or just rich with the
accumulated land of almost a millennium of mortmain. The
artist could go from one to another of these patrons, as each
rebuilt or redecorated, and from each he could enjoy pro-
tection, and exemption from the control of the guilds— from the
240 Right Nymphenburg (Munich). stucco group of Diana by E. Verhelst.
between 1734 and 1739 on the Amalienburg
241 Below Augsburg. Schazler Palace. Festsaa/, panelling by P. Verhelst.
frescoes by Gregono Guglielmi. 1765-70
Introduction
425
356
246
172 Part 1V Central and Eastern Europe
sovereign entities, because they could confer Hoffreiheit (tree-
dom of the court), which meant that the artist remained subject
to their jurisdiction alone; and at monasteries that were not
sovereign, because they were situated in the countryside, out-
side the effective writ of the guilds.
The impulse to rebuild or to build from scratch was felt by
almost every one of these sovereigns in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries; partly because of the need to repair the
ravages of the Thirty Years War and under the spur of emu-
lation and modernity, and partly from the demonic pleasure of
planning and building — what the Schonborn family, who were
particularly afflicted with it, familiarly referred to as their
Bauwurmb. But there were also more specific reasons. In the
case of the lay and episcopal princes, one of these 1s commonly
described as the desire to create miniature Versailles. This 1s a
partial truth, in that Versailles was then the epitome of French
architecture, and it was to France and to French architects that
most German princes turned for inspiration and advice. But the
inspiration as often came from other French palaces like Marly
or the Trianon, and actual attempts to create from nothing a
new complex to house a whole court, and to include formal
grounds and a planned city were rare — Rastatt, Carlsruhe, and
Ludwigsburg are however examples — and, as demonstrated by
the fate of Fischer von Erlach’s original design for Schonbrunn,
the concept was rejected by Louis XIV’s real rival, the emperor.
What the German princes were most eager to do was to come
down from their mediaeval castle-eyries to build in the plain —
the Residenz at Landshut ts the earliest instance of this and that
at Wurzburg one of the latest — and to build in a form that took
account of the new ceremoniousness of court life; a cere-
moniousness which, despite the French word etiquette first used
in Germany to describe it, emanated from Burgundy via the
Spanish Habsburgs rather than from France. Court etiquette
centred upon two things, the reception of distinguished
guests and attendance upon the person of the prince. The great
halls and ceremonial staircases, in whose design the prince
himself was sometimes involved, served as a worthy frame for
the one, whilst the subtly graded succession of rooms forming
an apartment calibrated the other. In one instance, the Reiche
Zimmer of the Munich Residenz, the planning and decoration
of the rooms expressed the latent claim on the part of their
occupant to promotion from electoral to imperial status.
The rebuilding of monasteries was partly governed by similar
considerations, and partly by changes in the mode of living of
the monks and their superiors.t On the one hand monks, on the
model of the friars, now required individual cells in place of the
former communal dorters, and also expected the provision ofa
separate set of common rooms, centring on two refectories, one
for summer and the other for winter use: on the other much
more lavish provision had to be made for guests, and for the
abbot or prior in his role as ruler and host. This provision was
partly practical. but it was also strongly representational: the
lavish scale and decoration of the Fiirsten- or Kaiserzimmer
expressed a monastery’s submission to, yet also its worthiness
to receive, its ultimate overlord. This was generally balanced by
equal expense lavished on the church and the library, whose
decoration often betrays the fact that they were not merely
undertaken ad nraiorem gloriam Dei, but also in celebration of
the monastery’s and the order’s century-old services to Christ-
ian religion and learning. Monasteries were also generally the
custodians of the major pilgrimage-places, which benefited
from a startling revival of popularity in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. Again, rebuilding was not merely under-
taken to house the shrine or image more worthily, and to
accommodate the increased numbers of the faithful, but also to
enhance the prestige of the pilgrimage and augment the number
of pilgrims.
It is important that by far the greater number of rebuilt and
remodelled churches in the Catholic parts of the Empire after
the Thirty Years War were executed for the monastic orders,
whether directly for themselves, generally as the culmination of
the entire reconstruction of an abbey or priory, or as the
churches of pilgrimages administered by them. On the one hand
it was easier to set about the reconstruction or total internal
transformation of these churches, set in the middle of the
countryside, because there were no complications arising from
family chapels decorated with altars and tombs as each family
saw fit. Old altars could be ruthlessly discarded, and everything
— frescoes, stucco, sculpture, altars, pulpit, confessionals, and
even apostle-light sconces — could be renewed, to partake in an
overall programme of decoration and meaning. For on the
other hand, the older monastic orders, set in the country, and
recruited largely from the middling ranks of rural towns, found
it easy to slip back into the kind of piety and learning that had
prevailed before the upheavals of the Reformation. There was
thus a revival of symbolic thought, manifested not only in the
number of churches on symbolic plans that were designed in the
Baroque period, but also in the motives behind the total
reconstruction or internal redecoration of the rest. Churches
were seen metaphorically as embodiments of the Church, and
after their transformation were therefore invoked 1n countless
sermons as the Bride of Christ, the New Jerusalem. This
justification for adornment and renewal chimed with the
desire to redecorate or rebuild in the new style, that sprang both
from the revived prosperity of the monasteries after the re-
ligious wars were at last over, and from the desire to celebrate
the new-found security of Catholicism from attacks either by
the Protestants or the Turks. And whilst the Catholic parts of
the Empire, in the frescoes and furnishings of their churches,
and in the churches themselves, celebrated the very things that
had provoked the Protestants into schism — the Virgin and the
cult of saints. pilgrimages, monasticism, the Real Presence, the
sacrament of confession — the Protestants sought to evolve an
architecture that was specifically Reformed. These efforts,
which were codified in two treatises by Leonhard Chnstian
Sturm (1669-1719) in 1712 and 1718, were rewarded with a
triumphant conclusion in Bahr’s Frauenkirche at Dresden
(1726-43).
These two kinds of patron, the lay and the ecclesiastical
(prince-bishops built as laymen, on account of their aristocratic
birth and sovereign status, whatever their personal piety), held
out two distinct forms of architectural career. Princes needed
above all architects who could plan complex sets of apartments,
design showpieces like the ceremonial staircases and great halls.
and also little pavilions and hermitages intended for less formal
moments, men who could coordinate the work of the multitude
of craftsmen — joiners, woodcarvers, gilders, stuccadors, pain-
ters etc. ~ required to fit out their interiors. Since most princes
242 Opposite Wurzburg, Neumiinster, fagade probably designed by Johann
Dientzenhofer, 1712-16. One of the most strictly Ttalianate works in
Franconia, based on a knowledge of Carlo Fontana’s facade of S. Marcello
(plate 70)
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had voyaged and pretended to some competence in architecture
themselves. it was desirable for their architects also to be
travelled men with whom they could converse, so the latter
tended to be gentlemen-amateurs, Frenchmen (who received a
kind of automatic patent of nobility in Germany), or officers
trained as military engineers. Ecclesiastical patrons by con-
trast needed men who could manipulate space and light to
produce the most striking and effective church interiors. men
whose craft training would have familiarized them with the
techniques of vault-construction, and who had the entre-
preneurial skills to supervise the erection of vast monastic
ranges out of the simple materials of brick and plaster. The
dichotomy should not. however, be exaggerated — Neumann,
for instance, triumphantly bestrode both spheres of activity
(working in the main for a prince-bishop with a keen interest in
the building of churches) — but. just as there were architects like
Cuvilliés or P6ppelmann who never carried through a whole
church, there were others like Johann Michael Fischer and
Dominikus Zimmermann in Bavaria. or Prandtauer and
Munggenast in Austria. who were never invited to build
palaces. Decorative artists were less compartmentalized in their
activity, but even amongst these it should be remembered that
there was an almost complete separation between the carvers of
church furnishings. like pulpits and choir-stalls, who were often
lay-brothers. and the makers of palatial boiseries, and that
certain stuccadors. like the elder Feichtmayrs. operated in an
almost exclusively ecclesiastical context.
For the craft mason. though many of his ecclesiastical clients
lay outside the sphere of guild control, it was nonetheless
necessary to have gone through the guild system of training.
which meant spending four years as an apprentice, at the end of
which he was freigesprochen, supplied with a passport. and
obliged to travel abroad as a journeyman on his Wanderschaft.
To become an independent master. he had first to have super-
vised the execution of a building as a Polier, and then to gain
admittance to the guild of a particular town by the presentation
of a masterpiece and the payment of a fine. Not ull then could
he work on his own account. though many journeymen did so
illegally as Pfuscher. Most guilds were by this time exclusive and
nepotic. so that even for the most talented. marriage to the
daughter. or more usually the widow, of an established master.
which brought with it citizenship of the town concerned, was
the usual means of entry. By contrast with this largely practical]
training, the architects who designed palaces had generally
acquired their knowledge of architecture from travel, books
and engravings. Military engineer-architects had in addition a
useful knowledge of mathematics and geometry (as did some
painter-architects from their familiarity with perspective and
guadratura — which Padre Pozzo suggested was sufficient to
qualify anyone as an architect) and some practical knowledge
of building and surveying through learning the art of forti-
fication.
The result of these distinctions in social origin and training
between the architects of churches and those of palaces ts that
there is thus not only a stylistic division between the Protestant
North — orientated more towards the Netherlands and France,
and mostly preoccupied with secular architecture and the
243 Opposite Bad Wurzach, staircase of the Residence built by an
unknown architect for Truchsess Ernst Jakob von Waldburg-Zeil-Wurzach.
i772 3—28
oJ
oF 4)
Introduction 1
peculiar problem of formulating a specifically ‘Protestant’ form
of church architecture ~ and the Catholic South, but also within
the South itself. two distinct strands of development that
fertilized one another, but remained essentially distinct.
Because of the diversity of developments involved it is
difficult to provide a satisfying definition of the Baroque in
Central Europe, and even harder to try to define Rococo
architecture as a distinct tectonic phenomenon, rather than as a
modification of the Baroque. characterized or induced by the
use of a form of decoration chiefly associated with the type of
ornament known as rocail/e (an ambiguous shelly substance).®
As in England the use of the word Baroque is rendered
problematic by the fact that the term Renaissance is not wholly
appropriate to what went before, whilst in Central European
church architecture there is anyway no clear demarcation
between the two. Moreover. because of the Thirty Years War,
the natural time-lag in assimilating developments in Italy was
accentuated, both by the absence of any significant building
activity during the war. and by the dominance after it of the
itinerant Italians practising what might be described as
provincial Renaissance survival architecture (even if in-
corporating certain features that may be regarded as Baroque).
Baroque architecture in Central Europe may be said to begin
with the displacement of these itinerant Italians: on one level. in
the capitals, by architects directly familiar with developments in
Rome. and on the craft level by Germans themselves, migrating
to areas with a dearth of trained builders. Those with first-hand
experience of Rome included both native architects — Wolf
Casper von Klengel (1630-91) in Saxony. Hermann Korb
(1656-1735) in Brunswick, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Er-
lach (1656-1723) and Jean Luca von Hildebrandt (1 668—1745)
in Austria, Andreas Schliiter (c. 1663-1714) in Prussia. and
Cosmas Damian Asam (1686-1739) and Egid Quirin Asam
(1692-1750) in Bavaria — and foreigners, like the Italians
Domenico Martinelli and Domenico Egidio Rossi (from Lucca
and Fano respectively) in Austria, and the Burgundian Jean-
Baptiste Mathey in Bohemia. It is striking how many of these
were artists rather than architects by training. The German
craft builders who emigrated from their homelands tncluded
the Bavarians who went to Bohemia and the Upper Palatinate —
amongst them the Dientzenhofers — the Tyroleans who repop-
ulated Lower Austria — notably Prandtauer and Munggenast —
and the itinerant Vorarlberger masons and Wessobrunner
stuccadors. who took on the Comasques and Graubundeners at
their own level in Switzerland and Swabia. At the same time the
kind of uncritical admiration of all things Italian revealed in
Prince Eusebius von Liechtenstein’s "Treatise on Building’ (c.
1678). and in the Electress Henriette Adelaide’s dismissal of
Germans as ‘pit idioti nell’ edificare’. which had licensed the
employment of Italians however mediocre, gave way to a more
discriminating desire for designs from the leading architects in
Italy. Guarini produced designs for the Theatine Church in
Prague. and it was hoped that he would do the same for Munich
(though in the event Henriette Adelaide contented herself with
the uninspiring Agostino Barelli): whilst Carlo Fontana was
asked to produce designs for Fulda, for palaces in Prague for
Counts Martinitz and Sternberg. and for a country seat for
Prince Johann Adam von Liechtenstein. That virtually none of
these designs was realized — any more than plans supplied by de
Cotte or Boffrand in the eighteenth century, when France was
setting the tone for palace architecture. were executed — was
243
176 Part IV) Central and Eastern Europe
almost inevitable in view of the architects’ unfamiliarity with
their client's requirements. The next best thing was therefore to
bear off one’s own architect from Rome — as Archbishop
Waldstein did with Mathey, or Count Kaunitz did with Dom-
enico Martinelli — or to employ someone like Fischer von
Erlach or Hildebrandt who could claim to have worked under
Bernini or Fontana.
Three amongst this first generation of Baroque architects
were also sculptors (Fischer von Erlach, Schltter and
E. Q. Asam), and three were painters by training (D. E. Rossi,
J.B. Mathey, and C. D. Asam). Domenico Martinelli came to
architecture via the study of geometry and mathematics, whilst
Klengel — foreshadowing the trend in the eighteenth century —
was a military engineer. The preponderance of artists helps to
account for the important role in Central European archi-
tecture played by the associated arts, though this was also a
reflection of the wishes of the patrons. The architecture of this
first generation (with which the Asams must be reckoned,
though they were younger, because in Bavaria the Graubtind-
eners kept their hold longer — first through Max Emanuel’s
favour, and then through his prolonged exile) is naturally
characterized by a strong Italian, and particularly Berninian,
flavour.
It was not until the Treaty of Rastatt had ended the War of
the Spanish Succession in 1714, bringing peace to the Empire,
and allowing Max Emanuel and his brother Joseph Clemens
back to their electorates of Bavaria and Cologne, that the
already prevalent admiration of things French blossomed in a
remarkable series of palaces and pavilions built by the sover-
eign princes of the Empire in the French mode — some to plans
sent from France, some with French architects or dessinateurs,
almost all using French craftsmen and furnishings, and with
French garden layouts. Church architecture in the Southern
Empire was touched by these influences, mainly in the field of
ornament, which evolved from heavily plastic figurative car-
touche and acanthus ornament (the latter itself once inspired by
French engravings), through ribbonwork and the so-called
Régence — chiefly inspired by the engravings of Beérain and
Audran — to rocaille, a fusion of the new shell-based and
asymmetrical French ornament of the 1730s with surviving
indigenous strains of the asymmetrical cartouche tradition.
France had however nothing to offer — with the possible
exception of the Church of the Invalides and the Versailles
Court Chapel - in the way of strictly architectural models for
churches in Germany. Here the picture is one of indigenous
architects emancipating themselves from adherence to foreign
prototypes, and reinvigorating the native tradition with a new
feeling for fluid space — as exemplified in the churches of J. M.
Fischer, K. }. Dientzenhofer, and Balthasar Neumann — and for
the integration of architecture and decoration — supremely in
the churches of Dominikus Zimmermann.
Moreover, just as in the field of ecclesiastical architecture
there were kinds of structure whose development as special
lypes was virtually peculiar to the Empire — pilgrimage-
churches and monastic libraries — so in secular architecture
there were features that preoccupied architects to a degree
unknown in Italy or France — notably the ceremonial staircase,
which called forth their best from Fischer von Erlach, Hilde-
brandi and Neumann, and even resulted in anonymous works
of distinction like the staircase of the Waldburg Schloss at Bad
Wurzach (c. 1725).
When the second generation of architects in the Catholic
parts of the Empire died - K.I. Dientzenhofer in 175],
Neumann in 1753, J. M. Fischer and D. Zimmermann in
1766, Cuvillies in 1768, and J.C. Schlaun in 1773 — the creative
élan went out of architecture in the regions in which they
operated, as it had already done in Austria by the accession of
Maria Theresa. Neumann’s son, Franz Ignaz, was a brilliant
engineer like his father, but he was refused the opportunity of
completing his father’s church of Neresheim on account both of
his youth and of his desire to execute the vaults as his father had
planned them — a revealing failure of confidence on the part of
the abbey. The sons of Fischer von Erlach and Cuvilliés — Josef
Emanuel and Frangois the Younger — were both competent
architects and accomplished draughtsmen, but both came
under the influence of the French academic tradition, and did
not develop their fathers’ achievements. In the event it was
French émigré architects, who had never lost their foothold in
the courts of the Rhineland, who superseded the already
moribund tradition of German Baroque architecture — of which
J.G. Specht’s Abbey Church of Wiblingen (1772-83) stands as
the clearest testimony. The last great abbey church, St Blasien
(1772-83), and the last great episcopal Residenz, that of
Coblenz (1777-86), were both designed in the severe idiom of
French Neo-Classicism, by a Frenchman called Pierre Michel
dIxnard (1723-95), though at Coblenz he was discharged in
1779 and replaced by a Frenchman from Paris itself, Peyre the
Younger. In both cases the plans were submitted to a French
Academy for approval — nothing could better illustrate the
Germans’ repudiation of their own architecture. In Germany,
as in France, theory had won the day over practice, the trained
architect over the craft builder; of what had been two parallel
traditions — an aspiringly cosmopolitan palace architecture,
and a fundamentally vernacular church architecture — the latter
had been swallowed up by the former, and not until the last two
decades of the nineteenth century did the magnitude of the
achievements of Central European Baroque architecture begin
to be perceived.
———eEeEeEeEeE— ——_ ——
Austria
lt is appropriate to begin this survey of Baroque architecture in
Central Europe with Austria, not merely because the Austrian
‘crown lands’ — Upper and Lower Austria. Styria, and Car-
inthia — were the hereditary territories of the head of the
Empire. but also because it was here that the most conscious
attempts to wrest back architectural commissions [rom the
hands of the peripatetic Italians were made. I]t was also in
Austria that the Reichsstil’?’ was forged. To translate this
straight-forwardly as “Empire style’ would be misleading: it was
more a tendency to plan ona scale and with symbolic elements
expressive of Empire. that is to be found not merely in the
buildings of the emperor and of his direct great subjects. but
also in those parts of the Empire which were imperial rather
than particularistic, like the episcopal states ruled by the
Schénborns. For these rulers. it came naturally both to seek
advice from a great Austrian architect like Hildebrandt. and to
send their own architects, like Maximilian von Welsch, Neu-
mann, and Kitichel. to Vienna, just as others were sent (includ-
ing Neumann himself on a previous occasion) to Paris, or to
Italy. Finally. because Austria was the land of the emperor, it
contained a capital city, Vienna. which alone amongst all the
cities of Central Europe could compare with the other great
European capitals — Paris. Rome. London or Naples — 1n the
number and kind of architectural commissions that it afforded.
Only Vienna supported a sufficiently rich and numerous aristo-
cracy to require the building of enough town palaces and
suburban villas to provide architects with an alternative lay
practice to that of working for the ruling prince.
The states on the periphery of the Empire — Austria, Prussia
and Saxony — having been won by conquest, were the most
unitary. Their rulers were untrammelled by independent en-
claves within them, whether secular, monastic. or episcopal.
The Habsburgs were absolute sovereigns in their own right over
the whole of Austria, Bohemia and Hungary (whose originally
elective monarchies were made hereditary in 162] and !711
respectively). Once the Turkish menace had been lifted after the
Relief of Vienna in 1683, and all of Hungary and much of the
Balkans recovered from Turkish domination (by the Treaties of
Carlowitz (1699) and Passarowitz (1718) in turn) Austria’s
eastern flank was secure. The sense of national identity induced
by these successes was given further focus by rivalry with the
other great continental power, France: although this arose less
from any threat to Austrian interests than from Louis X]V's
seizure of imperial and Habsburg territories in the west, and
from dynastic rivalry between Habsburg and Bourbon over the
throne of Spain. Austrian nationalism found expression in such
propagandist works as Hornigk’s Osterreich iiber alles, wann es
nur will (1684) — “Austria over all, when it but wills it — and
Wagner von Wagenfels’ Ehren-Ruff Teutschlands (1691) —*A
call to the honour of Germany’ — in which Austria and
Germany were called upon to build up their own resources and
throw off their servility to things foreign. Such exhortations
were reflected in the growing demand for the employment of
‘Tenutsche’ rather than ‘Welsche’— Germans rather than Italians
— as masons and architects. The more dynastic and imperial
note on the other hand was struck in the ambitious scale and
programmes of the buildings erected by the emperors and their
immediate entourage, and in the plans to rebuild certain of the
great abbeys.®
Austria 177
244-Salzburg Cathedral, inlenor
Austria, being contiguous to Italy, had been one of the first
parts of Germany to be overrun by the peripatetic Italians.
whose skill in the new bastioned method of fortification was in
especial demand to guard against the Turks after the Battle of
Mohacs (1526). Operating at first under the protection of the
ruler, they succeeded in gaining admission to the Viennese
masons’ guild in 1627, whilst by 1660 they had established such
a stranglehold over the guild at Graz that they were accused of a
deliberate policy of excluding Germans.’ Although these Ital-
ians were almost all from the periphery of Italy, they basked in
the immense prestige of metropolitan Italian architecture. They
came from around Lake Como and from the Italian-speaking
parts of Graubiinden, and the buildings that they put up were
correspondly provincial and retardataire —e.g. the Cathedral at
Salzburg (then an independent archiepiscopal state) c. 1614-28
by Santino Solari: the Servite Church, Vienna, by Carlo
Canevale 1651-77: and the Leopoldine range of the Vienna
Hofburg. by Filiberto Lucchese 1660-66. The exaggerated
admiration for all Italian architecture is exemplified by the
244
245
178 Part IV Central and Eastern Europe
treatise on architecture that Prince Eusebius Liechtenstein
wrote for his son around 1678.!° In this he maintains that ‘in its
buildings Welschlandt (Italy) surpasses the whole world, so that
its manner and no other should be followed, for it is fine,
imposing, and majestic’. His naive views as to what constituted
‘the Italian manner’ can be seen in his admonition: ‘never, never
for all time put up any building without architectural adorn-
ment... and this consists in nothing other than the 5 Orders of
columns, and in these alone’. For him, the ideal palace was one
which would have ‘60 or more columns succeeding one another
the same distance apart, and in 3 tiers’ (an ideal that his son,
advised by him, strove to achieve in Schloss Plumenau (Plum-
lov) in Moravia, 1680-85), and the ideal church a transeptless
basilica without a dome, but with five superimposed Orders!
When this treatise was first found it was thought to derive from
the sixteenth century, and it clearly indicates that even a great
and well-travelled magnate was not going to make any very
sophisticated demands of the peripatetic Italians. The most
influential works of the latter were in fact churches in which
they deployed another of their special skills — stucco-work — to
transform the internal appearance of an existing mediaeval
building, as in the national pilgrimage-church of Marta-Zell
(1644-83, by Domenico Sciassia and others) and the Benedic-
tine abbey church of Kremsmunster (1680s, by G. B. Barberino
and assistants).
The eventual relegation of the provincial Italians to a sub-
ordinate role in Austrian architecture took place in two ways:
as the result of a greater awareness of contemporary or near-
contemporary architecture in Rome, and through a national-
istic urge towards the employment of natives.
The desire to use native-born architects can be seen both as
the result of pressures from below and as a reflection of
conscious policy from above. In 1691 the Vienna guild forced
Prince Johann Adam von Liechtenstein (the son of Prince
Eusebius) to cancel the original contract with a Graubundener
mason, Antonio Riva, to build his suburban palace, and to
substitute another with a German. Again, in 1700, he had to
appeal to the emperor for special permission to hire a welsch
mason to execute the orangery, on the grounds that the plans,
having been drawn up by a welsch architect, would be un-
intelligible to the local masons. On the other hand, when
Hildebrandt petitioned the emperor Leopold | to succeed the
retiring court builder Pietro Tencala in 1699, he began his
application by saying, ‘If this post is really once more to be filled
with a worthy subject, and native vassals are to be given first
consideration, may I then put myself forward, as a born child of
this country, of German parents... .
At the same time, consciousness amongst clients of recent
developments at Rome was increasing. Though only Prince
Liechtenstein in Austria is known to have procured plans for a
country seat from a leading Roman architect — from Carlo
Fontana in 1696 there was an eagerness to employ those with
direct experience of the fountainhead. In two cases, that of
J.B. Mathey (who was taken back from Rome to Prague by
Archbishop Waldstein in 1675) and that of Domenico Egidio
Rossi, painters were converted into architects. In 1690 Counts
Harrach and Kaunitz succeeded in attracting the Lucchese
Domenico Martinelli to Vienna from Rome, where he had been
professor of perspective at the Academy. It was he who
completed Count Kaunitz’s town palace, after it had been
bought by Prince Liechtenstein (1694-1700), and he who com-
pleted the latter’s suburban palace (!700—1!1).'' But the most
exciting event for aware patrons was the return in 1687 of
Fischer von Erlach after almost sixteen years spent in Italy,
chiefly in Rome. Within a year, Count Michael Althan, for
whom Fischer was shortly to build the Almensaal at Schloss
Frain (1688-92) in Moravia, was eagerly enquiring as to
whether it was really true that Fischer was the man who had
spent sixteen years with Bernini, whilst two other members of
the Liechtenstein family were reassuring one another of the
great pains that they were taking to nurse this ‘great virtuoso’
through an illness. In 1689 Fischer was identified with the
patriot party through his appointment as tutor in civil and
military architecture to the Crown Prince Joseph, alongside
Wagner von Wagenfels as tutor in history and politics. The
history that the latter composed for the private use of the crown
prince had two leitmotivs: that the clergy should not be
permitted to exceed their rightful sphere of influence. and that
foreigners should not be preferred to native subjects. In 1690
Fischer thoroughly vindicated the latter maxim as far as
architecture was concerned, by utterly outclassing the South
Tyrolean Pietro Strudel in the two temporary triumphal arches
that he designed to greet the Crown Prince Joseph on his return
to Vienna after his election as king of the Romans. Wagner von
Wagenfels celebrated Fischer's achievement the next year in his
Ehren- Ruff Teutschlands (1691) in purely chauvinist terms — the
profound and artistic German, ‘who left it to his work, and not
to his mouth, to speak’ defeats the boastful foreigner — but
Fischer's two triumphal arches are in fact a demonstration that,
during his years in Italy, he had acquired a rich symbolic
vocabulary greatly indebted to ancient Rome, and a mastery of
complex architectural forms gained in modern Rome, beyond
the scope of any rivals.
It is with Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (1656-1723)
that the history of a specifically Austrian Baroque architecture
begins.!? He was the son ofa sculptor from Graz, and it was as a
sculptor that he himself began, probably being sent to Rome by
the local magnates, the Princes Eggenberg, like the painter
Hans Adam Weissenkirchner, to improve his technique and
broaden his horizons. Whilst in Rome, Fischer worked, if not
directly for Bernini himself, for an assistant of his, Johann Paul
Schor and his son, and mingled with a group of scholars that
had gathered round Queen Christina of Sweden. The incorpor-
ation of sculpture and of sculptural features with an allusive
significance was to be an important feature in Fischer's archi-
tecture, and he remained something of an intellectual. This 1s
apparent both from his friendships. which, by contrast with
those of Hildebrandt, were with scholars like Letbniz and
Heraeus rather than with his clients, and from the publication
towards the end of his life of the Entwurff Ener Historischen
Architektur. Though only published in 1721, a manuscript copy
is dated 1712, and Fischer began working on it around [705,.)°
The title is somewhat misleading because it is less a historical
essay on architecture than a compilation of buildings from the
past and from exotic countries, reconstructed with the aid of
ancient coins and texts, or copied from travellers’ sketches. The
last two books contain a number of Fischer's own designs for
buildings and vases, both realized and ideal. For Fischer, there
was clearly no insuperable division between his own works and
his reconstruction of works from the past. His particular sense
245 Opposite Salzburg, fagade of the Cathedral built by Santino Solari,
1614-28 (the octagonal completions of the lowers and the sculpture added
later in the century)
180 =Part IV Central and Eastern Europe
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246 Above Fischer von Erlach, engraving of an idea] design for
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of history helped him to create an imperial idiom of archi-
tecture.
Fischer ts not known to have executed any sculpture after his
models for the Trinity Monument in the Graben in Vienna
(1687-93), and here already, though not the designer, he
suggested that “something unusual’ should replace the pro-
posed spiral column, because such columns were becoming
‘almost two-a-penny in the villages’. The Italian theatre-
designer Burnacini thereupon designed a — not much more
sophisticated — cloud-wrapped obelisk instead, but it was
Fischer who had awed the Viennese into feeling provincial in
the face of his Roman experience. The transition to architecture
therefore occurred as naturally for him as for the painters
Mathey and Rossi; they were the virtuosi whose direct know-
ledge of Italy ensured that anything that they designed, from
palaces to catafalques, would be both up-to-date and ingenious
(the word /ngenieur, used to describe Fischer and other architects
at this period, merely betokened their ability to provide original
designs), whilst craft-trained masons guaranteed the solid
construction of their buildings. Unlike the painter-architects,
however, Fischer was alert to the possibilities of stone from his
training as a sculptor, enabling him to make such innovations
as the ‘bulbous’ arch — an arch that curves both upwards and
outwards, first executed in lath and plaster in the Triumphal
Arch of the Viennese Citizenry in 1690, and in stone in the
portal of the Court Stables at Salzburg (1693-94). Significantly,
11 was this ‘craft’ feature in Fischer’s work which had the
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greatest vogue amongst the country architects building for
monasteries in Austria.
Fischer's work as an architect falls into three main spheres:
Imperial projects, city and suburban palaces for the higher
aristocracy, and designs for churches and altars. One of the
immediate results of Fischer’s appointment as tutor in archi-
tecture to the Crown Prince Joseph, who enjoyed the prospect
not merely of becoming emperor, but of reuniting the Habsburg
lines in Austria and Spain, was the project for a truly imperial
palace outside Vienna at Schonbrunn — a kind of counter-
Versailles. It was notorious that the imperial palace within the
city, the Hofburg, was as unbecoming to the dignity of the
emperors as was the palace of St James to the kings of England
— one French traveller in 1669 described it as being ‘like the
ughest houses of the rue des Lombards in Paris’, without proper
courtyards or sets of apartments, and without any gardens at
all. Though the Emperor Leopold I had extended and em-
bellished the range named after him (1660-66, and again after
a fire, 1668-81), using émigré Italians, his personal austerity
left him uninterested in any more far-reaching improvements. It
was, therefore, ostensibly for his heir that Fischer created his
first, ideal, design for SchOnbrunn, misleadingly described in
the engraving that he subsequently made of it as an imperial
hunting-lodge. In fact it used every resource of site and sym-
bolism to express the majesty of empire. The palace was to
stand at the top of the hill where von Hohenberg’s Gloriette
now presides, with a prospect right over Vienna to the borders
of the Crown Prince’s kingdom of Hungary. Massive arcaded
terraces and rock-hewn cascades descend to the entrance-gates,
flanked by Fischer’s favourite imperial motif of two Trajanic
246
columns. The sculpture of the fountains and entrance bolsters
the king/emperor’s claims to be regarded as a second Hercules
for prowess, and as a second Apollo tor his triumph over the
powers of darkness. The quadriga of the sun crowning the main
block of the palace employs the same symbolism as at Versailles
to equate king and sun, “Schonbrunn’ being interpreted in the
completion medal to mean the ‘fair spring’ in the west at which
the horses of the sun slake their thirst at the end of the day. The
concave central court, enclosing an enormous basin, may have
been inspired by Bernini's second design for the east facade of
the Louvre, but Fischer treats the main block as if the palace
were a secular Escorial, with the porticoed imperial apartments
in place of a church at the centre. The setting on the other hand
mixes elements of a lost monument of antiquity, the Temple of
Fortune at Praeneste, with reminiscences of terraced garden
settings such as had spread from Italy to France — e.g. St
Germain-en-Laye.
How seriously Fischer envisaged the realization of this
project it is hard to say: he later tried to interest Frederick 1 of
Prussia in a reduced version (1704) — befitting a king as opposed
to an emperor. But the emperor, unhke his mighty subjects,
never had great sums available for architecture, and the expense
of transporting materials to the hill-top site alone would have
been enormous. When Schénbrunn was uluumately begun to a
more modest design as—this time genuinely~ a hunting-lodge
for Crown Prince Joseph (1696ff), it was built at the bottom of
247 Below Vienna, plan of ihe Karlskirche by Johann Bernhard Fischer
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Austria 181]
the site, where no one could see any point in it. The emperor
insisted that the hunting-lodge be enlarged by two quad-
rangular blocks on either side for Joseph’s retinue. making it
into a full-blown summer-palace like his own Favorita, but
upsetting its balance. Neither the stables and offices, nor the
interiors, were however complete when Joseph died as emperor
in 1711. The palace was then forsaken by Charles VI, and its
present banal appearance, including the raising of the central
block and the addition of a mezzanine storey all round, is due to
Maria Theresa's architect. Nicolaus Pacassi (1744-49).
Fischer was unlucky in that, when his former royal pupil
became emperor in 1705, Austria was engaged in the War of the
Spanish Succession, thus precluding the grandiose recon-
struction of the Hofburg envisaged by Fischer and his master.
Under Joseph's brother and successor Charles VI (1711-40),
Fischer was nevertheless entrusted with the construction of
three imperial buildings incorporated in, or axially related to,
the Hofburg—the Imperial Library, the Imperial Stables, and
the Karlskirche.
The last-named was officially the fulfilment of a vow made by
Charles VI to build a church to St Charles Borromeo, should
Vienna be relieved from the great plague of 1713. In 1715 the
emperor personally chose Fischer's design from a wealth of
contenders. The fact that the names of the emperor and his
votive saint were the same is exploited in the building's
iconography. Fischer had designed the church from the first
with the unique feature of two Trajanic columns between the
outer towers of the fagade and the portico. These make a
secondary allusion to the two pillars, Jachin and Boaz, that
stood in the porch of the Temple of Solomon, but they were
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249
already a familiar feature of Fischer's imperial vocabulary.
They had gained an added significance under Charles VI as
emblematic representations of the Pillars of Hercules (reviving
a device of Charles V's, expressive of his power reaching to the
ends of the earth) — the classical name for the Straits of Gib-
raltac — betokening Charles's brief occupancy of, and claims
to. the Spanish throne. The columns are still topped by crown-
capped lanterns and imperial eagles, and Heraeus and Leibniz
originally proposed that the reliefs should show scenes fom the
lives of Charles VI’s homonymous predecessors — Charlemagne
and Charles the Good of Flanders. By 1721 the emperor had
decided that the reliefs should show scenes from the hfe of
Carlo Borromeo instead. but the two themes underlying the
depictions on either column were to be Fortitude and Con-
stancy, which happened to be both Charles VI’s own election
slogan as emperor, and the supposed meaning of Jachin and
Boaz.
Visually, the columns do not so much mediate between the
outer towers and the dome, as assert themselves as one pair of
elements amongst several intended to be separately ‘read’ for
what they symbolize or evoke. The plan gives a particularly
good idea of the arbitrariness of the fagade. This facade, with a
pedimented centre set in front of a dome, and terminated by two
towers with arched passageways beneath, recalls designs by
Maderno and Bernini for St Peter’s: but the pedimented centre
has been promoted into a free-standing portico with an in-
scription, recalling the Pantheon (a precursor of the portico is to
be found in J.C. Zuccalli's Church of St Erhard at Salzburg).
The concave junctions and the balustraded attic linking the
centre with the flanking towers evoke Borromini's S. Agnese,
whilst the dumpy form of the towers themselves is more akin to
Mansart’s Church of the Minims~— both churches with a domed
centre similarly set back between outlying towers. The Karls-
kirche is thus a sunuia not merely of erudite iconography, but
also of some of the major monuments of European archi-
tecture, imperial not only in its symbohsm but also in its
breadth of reference. Many of the present weaknesses of the
design. especially in the interior, stem from the church's com-
pletion by Fischer’s son Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach
(1693-1742).
The Imperial Stables (1721-25) were designed to form a
prospect for the Hofburg, and to house the palace of the master
of the imperial horse in the centre, in addition to six hundred
horses (which it was previously the obligation of the citizens to
stable). It is symptomatic of Fischer's grandiose imagination
that for the layout he should have drawn on his reconstruction
of the Golden House of Nero. even going so far as to take the
cruciform temple from inside the hemicycle at the rear and
place it outside, as a church for the grooms.
The Imperial Library was Fischer's last work, built post-
humously between 1723-26 by his son, to whom the cooler
French-influenced detailing of the exterior is doubtless due.
When the idea of building a new library first arose, shortly after
the Peace of Rastatt, in 1716, it was intended to erect a building
for the proposed Academy of Sciences as well. Both were
encouraged by Leibniz, who had been Librarian at Wolfen-
biittel when Korb built the first free-standing library in modern
Europe there. The incorporation of the Imperial Library into
the Hofburg and its representative status, however, link it to the
tradition of the great monastic libraries of Austria and South
Germany (the Library at Melk is almost coeval with it). The
Library occupies the two upper storeys of a building with
Austria 183
248 Opposite Kar\skirche, exterior, built by Johann Bernhard and Joseph
Emanuel Fischer von Erlach, 1716-33
249 Above Karlskirche. interior, completed in 1737, showing The Glory of
St Charles Borromeo by F. M. Brokoff
stabling below. The domically vaulted transverse oval centre Is
flanked by two tunnel-vaulted arms divided by diaphragm
arches supported on columnar screens. The arms originally
merged directly with the central area, but signs of stress in the
fabric forced Pacassi to insert arches, upsetting the effect and
undermining the illusionism of Daniel Gran’s central fresco
(1763-69).
The columnar screens are clearly a reminiscence of the gallery
in the Palazzo Colonna, and it is not necessary to see the
columns as yet another allusion to the Pillars of Hercules. The
sculptural decoration of the exterior and the fresco decoration
of the interior are however richly programmatic. The sculptural
programme is devoted to learning: a quadriga with Pallas
Athene banishing envy and ignorance over the central pavilion,
and the celestial and terrestial globes borne by personifications
of the appropriate branches of learning over the arms. Daniel
IS
on
64
184 Part 1V Central and Eastern Europe
Gran’s frescoes within are to an immensely detailed programme pathy to Italians. On his accession he had promptly halted work
drawn up by Konrad Adolf Albrecht von Albrechtsburg. on the church being built for the Italian-based Theatines,
Characteristically, that in the dome is a fulsome panegyric upon denied payment to the Italian stuccadors and architect, and
Charles VI, shown in a medallion supported by Hercules and only retained the latter (Johann Caspar Zuccalli) as court
Apollo, and his munificence in endowing the Library. This architect, until he could obtain the services of Fischer (1693).!4
contrasts with the more modest celebrations of learning found The first major work that Fischer executed for the arch-
282 in monastic libraries, two of which—at Altenburg and bishop, the Trinity Church (1694—1702), was in the nature of a
283 Admont-—were nevertheless to emulate the Imperial Library in calculated affront to their respective predecessors. The Theatine
grandeur.
Fischer was invited to the sovereign territory of Salzburg by
its prince-archbishop, Johann Ernst von Thun-Hohenstein
(1687-1709), very soon after the latter's election. This man,
from a German family originating in the South Tyrol, appears 251 Opposite Imperial Library, interior, allered by Nicolaus Pacassi in
to have combined a passion for building with a marked anti- 1763-69. Frescoes by Daniel Gran, completed in 1730
250 Below Vienna, exterior of the Imperial Library designed by J. B.
Fischer von Erlach, built by J. E. Fischer von Erlach, 1723-26
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252 Salzburg, engraving of Trinity Church, by Fischer von Erlach,
1694-1702 Vienna, Ost. Nationalbibliothek
Church had been planned in association with a seminary. The
latter Archbishop Thun prohibited and instead asked Fischer
to design a church contained between a priests’ hostel and a
school for sons of the nobility. Fischer took the oval plan
employed by Zuccalli in the Theatine Church and turned it
through 90°, to create a centrally planned church with longitud-
inal emphasis. The church has a concave facade between two
towers, in counterpoint to the dome over the oval, and convex
steps in front. Though the latter elements are derived from
Borromini's S. Agnese, which is likewise placed upon a square,
the Trinity Church is designed to dominate the end, rather than
to fit into the middle of its square-— hence the assertive pro-
trusion of its towers. These formerly had squat terminations
with concave corners and a cornice bent upwards over oval
oculi—‘bizarre’ detailing unlike the French sobriety of, above
all, the basement storey, but which was to remain a constant of
Fischer’s ecclesiastical architecture. It was very probably
Fischer who proposed that the dome should be entirely frescoed
by Rottmayr in the Roman fashion, rather than heavily
stuccoed in the way envisaged by the ‘provincial’ Zuccalli for
his two Salzburg churches.
Fischer designed four other churches for the archbishop, but
three of them, the Hospital Church of John the Baptist
(c. 1695-1704) the pilgrimage church of Maria Kirchental
(1696ff) and the Ursuline Church (1699-1705), were of too
slight importance to evoke a sophisticated design, or to receive
detailed attention from Fischer at a time when he was
increasingly employed at Vienna.
The fourth church is altogether greater in stature, and was
indeed the only one of Fischer’s Salzburg churches to be
included in his Historische Architectur—the Kollegienkirche
(1696-1707). Salzburg, which never admitted the exempt order
of the Jesuits, was the one territory in Southern Germany to
have a university not under their control, but run and sup-
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ported by the Benedictines. Though founded in the first quarter
of the seventeenth century, this lacked even a permanent chapel
until Archbishop Thun supplied the endowment for the present
church in 1694. The archbishop clearly intended to have a
church as different as possible from the aisle-less, tunnel-
vaulted and galleried churches most characteristic of the Jesuits
in South Germany, yet as distinctive. In this Fischer did not
disappoint him, creating a memorable convex fagade that was
thereafter adopted for most of the major Benedictine abbey
churches of South Germany. Fischer’s use in the interior of the
plan of Lemercier’s chapel of the Sorbonne ties in with the
archbishop’s institution in 1697 of the same obligatory oath
upon the Immaculate Conception for all graduates that had
been required at the Paris University since 1497.
The plan of the church is not only that of the chapel of the
Sorbonne, but ts also very similar to that of S. Carlo ai Catinari
in Rome, with which it also has the pierced-domed oval chapels
in the diagonals in common. The Kollegienkirche 1s however
unlike either of these models in the insistent verticality of both
the exterior and the interior. Counteracting this verticality is the
weaker longitudinal emphasis of the plan, which however
culminates in the remarkable light-flooded white stucco glory
of the Virgin Immaculate (the titular of the church) in the apse,
framed by two free-standing columns. These probably allude to
Jachin and Boaz, very appropriately for an institution devoted
to the pursuit of wisdom, and originally flanked a temptetto-
like tabernacle instead of an altar, so that God would have been
present only in the symbolic form of flooding light, making a
further rapprochement with the imageless sanctuary of Solo-
mon’s Temple. The archbishop decreed that after his death his
brain should be deposited in this church, just as his entrails
(symbolizing compassion) were to repose in the Hospital
Church, and his heart in the Church of the Trinity. He died in
1709, and with his death Fischer's architectural activity in
Salzburg came to an end; the next archbishop preferred Hilde-
brandt. Fischer’s churches thus form a kind of interlude in his
career: with the exception of Karlskirche, they were all designed
within five years of one another, for the same patron and city.
285
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Certain of their interior features, such as their relative plainness
and sparing use of white stucco (the best by Diego Carlone and
Paolo d*Allio) reflect the preferences of the archbishop acting
upon the idiom of the region. It 1s above all in the remarkable
diversity of their fagades that the fecundity of Fischer's 1magin-
ation can be seen, for example in trying out combinations and
variations of certain features. some of which— lke convexity
and concavity — preoccupied him in his secular work as well.
The greater nobility of Austria was in essence a court-created
aristocracy. which Leopold [ had set out as deliberately to
implant at Vienna. as Louis XIV had riveted that of France to
Versailles. In Austria. however. there was no separation be-
tween court and capital. nor was there any accommodation in
the royal palace for its courtiers. Instead, the second floor of
every house in Vienna was compulsorily requisitioned for the
use of court officers and officials. The construction of handsome
253 Below Salzburg. plan of the Kollegienkirche (University Church) by
Fischer von Erlach
254 Below right Kollegienkirche, facade. Built 1696-1707
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Austria 187
new palaces was encouraged by granting exemptions from
requisition for a number of years, whilst other palaces were
built to house certain ministers and their offices.'* The court
itself moved from palace to palace in Vienna and Its environs at
set seasons of the year, and the nobility emulated this by
requiring not only a town palace but also a villa-like suburban
palace, called a Lustgarten or Lustgebaude, to which to retreat.
especially in summer.'®
A number of such buildings. mostly one-storey pavilions.
had been built on the outskirts of Vienna before the Siege of
1683, in the course of which they and the incipient suburbs had
been destroyed.’” The traumatic experience of the siege led to
the stipulation thereafter that there was to be no building
whatsoever on the 600-foot wide g/acis in front of the city
defences. nor building on vantage-points overlooking this, in
order to deprive enemy artillery batteries of all cover. A
complete caesura was thus established between the city of
Vienna within the walls, which was one of the most crowded
cities of Europe. and the untrammelled suburbs and ‘gardens’
(with their buildings ranging from pavilions to palaces) beyond
the g/acis (though mostly inside the outer lines drawn by Prince
Eugene in 1704 against the marauding Hungarians). By the
246
188 Part IV Central and Eastern Europe
1690s it was sufficiently evident that the Turkish menace had
been permanently removed for the intensive development of the
suburbs to begin. The man coincided with the hour: though
Fischer built town and suburban palaces alike, and though it 1s
the former that have more successfully survived, his sketch-
books and engravings make it clear that it was in designing ever
new variations upon the ‘free’ form of the garden palace and the
garden pavilion that he took the greatest delight.
Fischer's earliest design for a palace in the environs of
Vienna, the original design for Sch6nbrunn, was as we have
seen, not for a Lustgebdude at all; nor would this be an apt
description of the two first major suburban palaces by other
architects: the new imperial Favorita by Burnacint (1687-90),
and the Liechtenstein Garden Palace (the original design
attributable to D. E. Rossi, 1691). The one was a dismal bar-
rack of a building (later appropriately converted into the
Academy for young nobles, the Theresianum), and the other,
with its grandiose paired staircases and huge central saloon,
placed representation above ease. Fischer's Lustgebdaude, by
contrast, seem designed for pleasure, open to the grounds about
them—often to an extent that was not compatible with the
harsh climate of the North, as opposed to the milder air of the
Mediterranean, in which Fischer’s imagination seems to have
lingered. Several of them were therefore altered to keep out the
cold, before being swept away altogether, with advancing
urbanization.
255 Vienna, engraving of Strattmann (tater Windischgratz) Town Palace by
Fischer von Erlach, 1692-93
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Fischer's Lustgebaude commonly have flat, balustraded
roots, frequently raised into a belvedere over the centre, which
is generally a bow-fronted or concave-cornered block housing
an (often oval) saloon, with wings adjoining. There is some-
times an intricate curved set of ramps and stairs linking the
house with the grounds, whilst the central portion, particularly
in the ideal version of Fischer's designs, is formed out of open
arcades on either side, so that breezes can waft through. What is
probably the first of these garden palaces, the Lustgebdaude in
Neuwaldegg, built, like the first of his town palaces, for Count
Strattmann in 1692, has most of these characteristics, though
here it is only the lower part of the centre that is open to the air
on both sides, forming a cross between the traditional sala
ferrena and a passageway, that to some extent prefigures
Pope’s Grotto under his house at Twickenham outside Lon-
don. The atlantes supporting the balcony on one side of this
and the shape of the staircase on the other clearly reveal the
influence of Mathey’s Schloss Troja— Fischer having just vis-
ited Prague, where he was sufficiently impressed by Mathey’s
Kreuzherrenkirche to ask permission to take drawings of it. But
whereus on Schloss Troja this staircase is merely a highly
sculptural adjunct to a fairly conventional building, Fischer's
whole villa is conceived sculpturally, as an oval held between
rectangular blocks with square projections, and is genuinely
linked to the surrounding garden through the staircase and
open arcades below. The projecting oval saloon in the centre is
essentially a French idea (though at Schloss Frain Fischer had
already created the Afnensaal as a free-standing domed oval),
taken from Le Vau's cltateaux like Vaux-le-Vicomte and Le
Raincy, and it was to be enormously influential in the Empire,
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especially in Bohemia; Fischer's innovation was to make this
feature like a vestibule open to the world outside — an idea that
ultimately proved unviable in the Austrian climate.
Fischer’s subsequent Lustgebdude outside Vienna, both ac-
tual and ideal, vary the themes enumerated above. That of
Count Althan (c. 1693) places the oval saloon (here closed)
between four windmill-like arms, a formula that, whether by
imitation or common preoccupation, was to be adopted by
Boffrand in his second design for Malgrange (1712) and by
Juvarra at Stupinigi (1729). The Villa Eckardt (built for Count
Schlick, after 1690) employs an open oval vestibule on one side
(cf. the Kollegienkirche), and a recessed front with concave
corners on the other. These concave corners and the open
arcading are retained in Fischer's design for a Lustgebaude just
outside Salzburg for Archbishop Thun, Schloss Klesheim
(1700ff), but the oval saloon has become a rectangle with
rounded corners and the staircase las been placed inside, whilst
in execution the arcades were glazed in. By the end of his career
Fischer seems to have capitulated entirely to the exigencies of
the climate — and, according to the inscription on the engraving,
to those of his client— and in designing a Lustgebdaude for the
minister of the elector of Hanover (and future king of Great
Britain), Baron von Huldenburg (1709-15), he made an en-
closed cubic building with quadrant wings far nearer in spirit to
the Palladian villas that were to be built in the latter country
than to his own airy pavilions.
256 Salzburg, Lustschloss Klesheim, 1700ff. Fischer von Erlach’s
engraving, showing the intended open arcading
Austria 189
Fischer's town palaces had to overcome a different set of
problems. In the crowded conditions of Vienna, in which,
unusually for Europe at the time, the houses were of five or six
storeys, and there was no room for gardens, the Italian palazzo,
rather than the French Adte/, was the model generally adopted.
The narrow streets placed a special premium on the scuptural
enrichment of the facade, and of the portal tn particular (which,
however, required special permission if it was to project), whilst
the multi-occupation of several of these palaces conferred
especial significance on the semi-public staircase.’®
The major town palace to be built immediately before
Fischer began his career as an architect, the Dietrichstein (later
Lobkowitz) Palace (1685-87 by G.P. Tencala), might almost be
a textbook illustration of another of Prince Eusebius Liecht-
enstein’s maxims: “If a building is to be magnificent 1t must be
long, and the longer the nobler. For a great row of evenly
spaced windows one after another makes for the greatest effect
and splendour’. Fischer's first town palace, for Count Stratt-
mann (1692-93), strove by contrast for the maximum differenti-
ation of its parts. There were projecting bays at either end,
clothed with a giant Order of pilasters, the recessed centre had
paired pilasters between the windows of the piano nobile and
paired atlantid-herms (a habitual Viennese motif) between the
attic windows, whilst the central portal had canted columns and
a three-dimensional arch. Statues crowned the parapets over
the projecting ends, and the whole building stood on a
rusticated basement. There was also a striking staircase within.
It was as if Fischer wanted to display his whole repertoire at a
stroke.
In his next town palace, for Prince Eugene, which was
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190 Part IV Central and Eastern Europe
originally built with seven bays (c. 1695fF), but so planned that
this could be expanded to twelve when an adjacent plot could be
acquired (which it was in 1703), Fischer partially reverted to the
infinitely extendable type of palace, with alternating windows
and giant pilasters. Indeed in 1723/4 Hildebrandt, who had
already superseded Fischer in the actual addition of the five
bays and in the supervision of the decoration of the interior,
added a further five. In this palace, however, Fischer's real
claim to originality lay in his design of the staircase, which he
was careful to proclaim as his own in an engraving produced
after the construction of the palace had passed out of his hands.
Staircases were something that particularly exercised the
minds of both architects and their clients at this period in the
Empire: both because, as Guarini pointed out, they were the
most difficult part of a building, for which Vitruvius had left no
rules, so that a successful design afforded all the pleasure of a
Baroque conceit, and because they played a crucial role in the
reception of guests with the appropriate mixture of deferential]
etiquette and overawing context.'? Before and during the
period that Fischer was constructing the palace for Prince
Eugene, Prince Johann Adam von Liechtenstein was acquiring
two impressive sets of stairs in his town and garden palaces. In
the garden palace Rossi had designed a majestic pair of dog-leg
Stairs setting out from each side of the vestibule and arriving on
either side of the great saloon; for the town palace Martinelli
had designed a rectangular welled staircase mounting two stor-
eys, whose alteration at the whim of the prince during the
architect's absence provoked him into fly-posting the palace
with placards denying all responsibility for it. Both these
Italian-designed stairs— though not the manners 1n which they
were doubled — were of a kind already well-established in North
Italy, and their construction and decoration were massive,
majestic and grave. In Prince Eugene's town palace by con-
trast, Fischer created a staircase whose ascent 1s a progressive
revelation of new spatial complexities. In essence it 1s of the type
introduced to Vienna by Martinelli in the town palace of Count
Harrach (c. 1690): starting with a single flight which bifurcates
at the first landing into two arms that come together again in a
balustraded landing over the beginning of the first flight. Fischer
substituted remarkable serpentine volutes supporting vases for
conventional] balustrades in the first half of the staircase, and
atlantes for columns supporting the upper landing, set the
second pair of these slightly wider apart than the first, and
placed doors up steps in the separately vaulted ends to the
transept-like arms, so that at each turn the visitor is kept in
uncertainty as to his ultimate goal, whilst the space about him
expands as he ascends. The atlantes represent Atlas himself
and Hercules, continuing the heroic imagery of the reliefs on the
portals, as did the frescoes painted later in the palace, in
allusion to Eugene's martial prowess; but their source is clearly
the Titan-supported external] staircase balcony at Schloss Troja
in Prague, which Fischer took the bold leap of transposing
indoors.
Fischer continued to design staircases, both conventional
and unconventional, throughout his career, though none as
remarkable as this. Two of the more unusual are those in the
Bohemian Chancery and the Trautson Palace, both in Vienna.
The former combines flights of stairs coming from the two
fronts of the building in a central landing, from which the upper
flights depart, with no more than balustrades and plinths
making the divisions, under a unitary vault. The latter consists
of one long flight, increasingly hemmed in by a pair of sphinxes
on plinths, four atlanies supporting a saucer dome over a
transeptal landing, and the walls of the return flights, before
emerging into the huge, light-filled void housing the upper part
of the stairs. The Batthyany and Trautson Palaces both have
three-aisled entrance passages, with the columns dividing the
aisles being paired and grouped in fours respectively. All these
stairs open off the side of the entrance-passage or courtyard; at
Schloss Klesheim, as befitted a palace in the open, Fischer
designed a staircase which took up the whole of the rear of the
central block, and which had arcaded openings both to the
central saloon and to the exterior. In effect, Fischer brought the
paired stairs of the Liechtenstein Garden Palace together under
one long, continuous ceiling, to meet at an upper landing acting
as a vestibule to the saloon, now pushed to the front of the
building. The meagre detailing of Archbishop Thun-
Hohenstein’s buildings was in this case accentuated by the
prelate’s death before its completion; what could be made of
the idea is shown by Juvarra’s staircase in the Palazzo Madama,
where it is, however, rightly given pride of place at the front of
the building.
Whilst Fischer's staircases seem to show him treating each as
a separate exercise, following no one line of development, his
later town palaces, in which some of them were housed, show
greater convergence. These are the Bohemian Chancery (after-
1708-14), the Trautson Palace (c. 1710-16: not strictly a town
palace, though given the air of one), and the Schwarzenberg
Palace (designed 1713) in Vienna, and the Clam-Gallas Palace
(1713) in Prague. All of them have a pedimented centre, which
in the case of the Trautson, Schwarzenberg and Clam-Gallas
Palaces projects as a distinct block. There is a firm distinction
between the channelled basement zone and that of the piano
nobile and upper mezzanine (though in the Clam-Gallas, where
the piano nobile is on the second floor, their relationship is
inverted). The sense of the buildings as cubic entities, or as
composed of interlocking cubes, is accentuated by the way in
which their heavily framed windows are set into relatively plain
walls, with a sense of interval between them. Although the
tendency to link elements vertically is still apparent, and ts
particularly strong where portals are concerned, there is a much
greater sense of repose, and of balance between horizontal and
vertical, than in Fischer’s earlier buildings. Sculpture and
structure are more firmly distinguished. The Clam-Gallas
Palace is the one in which these statements require most
qualification, and it has several features not found in the other
three: the absence of a central portal, and the placing instead of
one at either end, the use of atlantes-support doorways, and
the ‘skeleton’ treatment of the fenestration above these (derived
from Schluter’s Stadtschloss at Berlin), and finally the separate
projection of the ends in which these portals and window-
structures are housed. Several of these features are concessions
to local modes of building (the projections above the skyline
and the two portals). Certain features of these late palaces have
been described as ‘Palladian’ in the English sense. *Classical’
would be a better word, for it is doubtful that Fischer ever
carried out his intention of visiting England in 1704—where
Palladianism was anyway not yet established. This Classical
strain could as well have come from France as from England,
but it is tempting to imagine that the alliance of England and
257 Vienna, staircase of Prince Eugene's Palace by Fischer von Erlach,
L69Sff
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192 Part 1V Central and Eastern Europe
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258 Prague, engraving of Clam-Gallas Palace by Fischer von Erlach, 1713ff
Austria during the War of the Spanish Succession left its mark
on the style of Fischer's old age. There are certainly signs of a
reverse influence—in the work of Archer, and in Thomas
Lediard’s translation of the Historische Entwurff.
Jean Luca von Hildebrandt (1668-1745) is generally recog-
nized as a foil to Fischer von Erlach, and treated as an architect
of equal stature.*° It is true that he was so regarded by most of
his contemporaries. However, not only did his career as an
architect begin almost a decade later than Fischer's early
commissions (and continue for over two decades after Fischer's
death), but it was also not until Fischer's active presence as a
rival was removed (he was severely incapacitated by illness
towards the end of his life) that Hildebrandt found his own
idiom, and ceased to live off what were largely personal
interpretations of Fischer's ideas. The two men were very
different in character: Fischer was the scholar, said by one
(nonetheless admiring) client to ‘have a screw loose some-
where’; Hildebrandt was the genial, worldly, if temperamental
figure, with whom his clients were happy to sit and plan as if he
were an equal. We also know that there was a strong antagon-
ism between the two. Fischer, who had been trained as a
sculptor, was essentially an architect who thought in terms of
shapes and solids, and used sculptural enrichment in a way that
emphasized its plasticity. Hildebrandt, despite his training as a
military engineer, was essentially a designer and a decorator,
who was often consulted and asked for designs that would
enhance the visual appearance of an already planned or existing
building. Using the Frenchman Claude Le Fort du Plessy as a
designer. Hildebrandt was responsible for introducing ribbon-
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work ornament to Austria, whence it was diffused into stucco
decoration through much of Southern Germany. Hildebrandt
was often asked to modernize some earlier building; Fischer
never was. Hildebrandt was at his best as the frequently con-
sulted family architect to a number of Austrian magnates -— the
Schoénborns, the Harrachs, and Prince Eugene — creating and
adapting above all their country and suburban houses, and
inserting these into grounds (again, in collaboration with
French gardeners) with trees, hedges, vases, statues, gates, and
steps to create an enclosed world of which the house was but
one element. His masterpiece, the Upper Belvedere, is not
merely, like Blenheim, a building sii generis made for a hero,
but the centrepiece of such a composition.
Hildebrandt was born in Genoa in 1668, the son of a
German-born captain in the Genoese army. According to his
own account, after studying civil and military architecture with
Carlo Fontana and Ceruti respectively, Hildebrandt was at-
tached to Prince Eugene’s army in Piedmont as a fortifications
engineer from 1695-96. The ending of the war in 1696 and,
doubtless, the connections that he formed in the imperial army
(though we do not hear of any contact with Eugene himself till
1702) determined Hildebrandt to try his fortune in Vienna,
where the great wave of palace-building was by now under way.
Almost immediately, he obtained a major commission — to
build a garden palace for Prince Mansfeld-Fondi, for which the
ground was bought and the first plans were drawn up in 1697.
The plans for this palace and its grounds were the most
259 Opposite Munich, interior of the Church of St John Nepomuk built by
Egid Quirin Asam, begun 1733, with frescoes by Cosmas Damian Asam
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ambitious of any of those in the suburbs of Vienna except the
later Belvedere of Prince Eugene and the garden palace of
Prince Johann Adam von Liechtenstein, upon which work was
only to be recommenced in earnest in 1700. Prince Mansfeld-
Fondi came under strong suspicion of having abused his
position at court in order to obtain permission to place his
palace so close to the g/acis, on a site that could have provided
cover for an enemy gun-emplacement. Hildebrandt’s designs
characteristically show not merely the palace itselfand the cour
d'honneur and stables. but also the terraced arrangement of the
sharply tapering grounds behind. culminating 1n a pavilion and
an open-air theatre, though we know that the actual gardens
were designed by the Frenchman. Jean Trehet. For the palace,
Hildebrandt took and simplified Fischer's favourite motif of
saloon clamped between rectangular blocks. The saloon was
not isolated in the centre of the building, but has a porch and a
vestibule towards the forecourt, whilst the fenestration of the
garden front was carried uniformly through the whole front
including the projecting saloon. The palace also includes a
chapel, which Hildebrandt designed most attractively with a
cut-off and balustraded dome to the right of the vestibule. The
most original feature was the roof of the saloon, to which
Hildebrandt originally gave an ogee-shaped dome, but which
was finally built with a flat roof, and a drum-like corona pierced
by oculi transmitting light to a lantern illuminating the saloon
from above. Inside. the saloon is not an oval. but a domed
square extended by exedrae towards the garden and the
vestibule.
When Prince Mansfeld-Fondi died without male heirs in
1715, only the night half of the palace was complete. It was
bought in 1716 by Prince Schwarzenberg. who was unable to
turn his attention to completing it unt] }720, when his town
palace was finished. He used the same architects for
both— Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and his son. Hilde-
brandt’s lantern under the flat roof of the saloon having proved
unviable. Fischer was forced to create a closed saucer dome
(frescoed by Daniel Gran) in place of the lantern, and, 1n order
to provide enough light, to open great round-headed windows
on the garden front, thus interrupting Hildebrandt’s undiffer-
entiated fenestration and bringing the saloon nearer to his own
preference for the expression of distinct volumes. Like so many
garden palaces, the Schwarzenberg Palace (now a hotel) has
suffered from the later substitution of more practica] hipped
roofs and a plain buttressing parapet for the flat roofs and
statued openwork balustrade of the central part of the original
design, and also of conventional triangular pediments for the
curvilinear ones characteristic of Hildebrandt.
There was now an ecclesiastical interlude in Hildebrandt’s
career. Around the turn of the century three churches were
planned, altered or built to a borrowed design by him; St
Lawrence. Gabel (Némecké Jablonné, Northern Bohemia),
1699ff: the Piarist Church of Maria-Treu, Vienna (planned
21699, built 1716-54): and St Peters, Vienna, 1700ff. All
Hildebrandt’s subsequent sacred buildings were either chapels
or village churches, so that this trio of major churches would be
of some interest in his oeuvre: yet in the case of only one of them
— St Lawrence, Gabel — is his authorship certain. and even here
he disclaimed all responsibility for the dome. Maria-Treu ts a
refined repetition in plan of St Lawrence: its designer 1s
unknown, and its construction dragged on over the next half
century. It is not impossible that Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer,
who visited and drew the plan of the church in 1725 contributed
Austria 195
to the final design of the vaults. St Peter's was designed by an
Italian engineer. Gabriele Montani, who left for Spain in 1703.
If Hildebrandt, rather than the group of masons who credited
themselves with the design. had anything to do with the church.
this probably consisted in redesigning the fagade with its two
canted towers, in adaptation of the fagade of St Lawrence, but
without any relation to the lengthwise oval nave of the church
behind. It is thus far from easy to determine the characteristics
of Hildebrandt’s ecclesiastical style; all the more so in that the
first two churches display Guariniesque characteristics of the
kind that one might have expected Hildebrandt to have
introduced after his sojourn in Piedmont. but which do not
occur subsequently in his work, whilst they do recur 1n the work
of Bohemian architects who had an independent line of
communication with Guarini’s work through the designs that
he had supplied for the Theatine Church of Maria-Otting in
Prague.
The one church Hildebrandt is known to have designed, St
Lawrence, Gabel, was built at the expense of the imperial
viceroy in Bohemia, Count Berka.
Hildebrandt supplied the design and made occasional visits to
the site. but even at the laying of the foundation stone was
represented by an itinerant mason. Pietro Bianco. Count Berka
died in 1706, when the building had risen to the rim of the dome.
Hildebrandt and Bianco were immediately dismissed. and when
the execution of the building was subsequently entrusted to
another Italian. Domenico Perini. Hildebrandt lamented tn
1709 that ‘the whole system of that fine work’ had been
changed, and that ‘they did not want to finish it according to
his model and designs, but wanted to spoil it’. The church was
structurally complete by 1712, and furnished by 1717, but a fire
in 1788 totally destroyed the furnishings and the roof.
In designing the church, Hildebrandt seems to have been
guided by its dedication. modelling its plan to a considerable
extent upon Guarini’s Theatine Church of S. Lorenzo at Turin.
But though both churches are octagons with convex sides
protruding into the nave, Guarini's is inscribed in and enlivens
a square shell, with each side almost equivalent in value.
whereas Hildebrandt’s, which is equally inscribed inside a
square from which it protrudes only marginally at the sides.
260 Opposite Neu-Birnau, interior of the pilgrimage church by Peter
Thumb, 1746-51. Stucco by J. A. Feichtmayr, frescoes by G. B. Goz
261 Below Nemecké Jablonné (Gabel), plan of the Church of St Lawrence
261
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reverts towards the more traditional form of a cruciform nave,
with niche-chapels in piers in the diagonals and tunnel-vaulted
arms. It is this retreat from the more exciting possibilities of
Guarini's plan (Hildebrandt also substitutes a straight balcony
over the columns at the front of the diagonal chapels for
Guarini’s space-describing ser/ianas) that makes it doubtful
that Hildebrandt ever projected any kind of dome as complex or
interesting as Guarini'’s, despite his protestations over what
finally was built. Even so. his church was not without tmport-
ance for Bohemia: it initiated the use of three-dimensional
arches at the junction of interpenetrating spaces, though in the
hands of the Dientzenhofers these were to be transposed to the
context of longitudinal churches. The fagade, which must be all
but entirely Hildebrandt’s. is interesting for its subtly layered
convex centre. cut back in the middle bay to house the simple
portal and window above.
Shortly after the period at which St Lawrence was planned,
Hildebrandt formed the most important connection of his
career —that with Prince Eugene. In 1702 he provided the plans
for the first of Prince Eugene’s country houses, Schloss Rack-
eve, situated on an island in the Danube below Budapest. In its
original form this was a three-sided, single-storey summer
palace round a court. with hollow chamfering to the two-
storeyed central block housing the saloon. Hildebrandt pre-
sented the prince with a choice between a balustraded, flat-
roofed termination with oculi underneath. as on the Mansfeld-
Fondi (Schwarzenberg) Palace. or a dome-like mansard roof.
Prince Eugene chose the latter, but Hildebrandt employed his
alternative suggestion on the closely related Lustgebdaude of
Count Starhemberg (between 1700 and 1706). More clearly
than Schloss Rackeve, this building betrays the common an-
cestry of their hollow-chamfered central saloon, with an (orig-
inally) open vestibule in front, in Fischer's Villa Eckardt.
Rackeve and the Starhemberg garden palace, however, like the
Mansfeld-Fondi. show how Hildebrandt flattens out Fischer's
volumetric conception of his central saloons into mere pro-
jections above the roof-line and from the front of his evenly
fenestrated facades. In the same year as he built Schloss
Rackeve, Hildebrandt displaced Fischer in the supervision of
the extension and internal decoration of Prince Eugene's town
palace.
In 1706 and 1707 Hildebrandt began remodelling buildings
for members of two other families whose regular architect and
architectural consultant he was to become: the garden palace
acquired by Friedrich Carl von Schonborn, and Count Alois
Harrach’s family Schloss at Bruck on the Leitha. Friedrich Carl
von Schénborn arrived in Vienna as vice-chancellor of the
Empire in 1705, a post he had achieved through his uncle,
Lothar Franz von Schénborn, archbishop-elector of Mainz
and ex-officio chancellor of the Empire. Hildebrandt became
Friedrich Carl's adviser in all matters of architecture, decor-
ation and furnishing. the voice of all that was “modern’ in the
Austrian capital, which for Friedrich Carl was fully the equal of
the other pole of German palace architecture — Paris. Through
Friedrich Carl, Hildebrandt’s advice was obtained for his
262 Opposite Nemecké Jablonné, facade of the Church of St Lawrence
designed and partially built by Jean Luca von Hildebrandt, 1699-1706
(completed 1712)
263 Right Salzburg, slaircase of Schloss Mirabel] rebuilt by Hildebrand,
172)-27
Austria 197
uncle’s and brother's, as later for his own, buildings in Fran-
conia, thus helping to transmit something of the Reichsstil to this
Kaisertveu part of the Empire, which was further dilfused
through Neumann's employment by other members of the
family. who held bishoprics ranging from Konstanz to Trier.*!
Hildebrandt’s involvement in the Schonborns’ buildings in
Franconia is more satisfactorily dealt with in that context; his
work for Friedrich Carl in Austria can be treated briefly here.
Like every magnate, the vice-chancellor required a Lust-
gebdaude in the suburbs, which Hildebrandt built round the core
of an earlier building (1 706-13). He gave this the appearance of
a town palace towards the road. with a central section dis-
tinguished by a giant Order of pilasters, a balustraded mansard
roof, and a triangular pediment-like eruption of the entablature
over the combined portal and central window: the garden front
was built around the three sides of a court, with a projecting
hollow-chamfered pavilion in the centre. Hildebrandt’s main
imaginative effort went into designing the sculpture-filled
erounds and the interiors, of which nothing remains but the
staircase. which is the first to have his characteristic asym-
metrical scroll-work balustrades— most probably inspired by
Padre Pozzo’s altar-rails in the Gesu, but licensed by Fischer’s
198 Part IV Central and Eastern Europe
very different scroll-work balustrades in Prince Eugene's town
palace.
In 1710, the very year in which Lothar Franz acquired
Pommersfelden, Friedrich Carl bought the domain of Gollers-
dorf. The next few years saw a lively interchange of suggestions,
artists, and reports of progress between uncle and nephew, as
each sought to convert his acquisition into a country estate. But
whereas both of them originally intended merely to convert and
adapt the existing fabric, Lothar Franz, despite his protest-
ations that he was just building a family seat, ended by building
Pommersfelden from scratch with a representational staircase
and Kaisersaal, whilst Friedrich Carl, who had deliberately left
alone the seigneurial Sch/oss in order to transform a lesser
building into his Tuscu/anum (the name of Cicero’s villa-farm),
progressively expanded his intentions, though never breaching
the countrified silhouette of the original house. This was very
264 Below Vienna, fagade of the Daun (later Kinsky) Palace by
Hildebrandt, 1713-16
265 Opposite Daun-Kinsky Palace, slaircase
similar to what Hildebrandt was to do to Prince Eugene's
country property at Schlosshof (1729-32), and in both cases it
was to the quasi-architectural shaping of the grounds as an
exterior continuation of the house that Hildebrandt’s main
attention was directed (171]—18). Since the whole village of
Gollersdorf belonged to Friedrich Carl, he continued to ask
Hildebrandt for a number of other designs for such works as a
Loreto Chapel (consecrated 1715), a monument to the Virgin.
and a delightful pierced-vanlted ciborium chapel to St John
Nepomuk (1733), and the rebuilding of the parish church
(1741-42). In 1729 Friedrich Carl was elected to the sees of
Wurzburg and Bamberg, where he continued to call upon
Hildebrandt’s advice on the completion of the Wurzburg
Residenz and the building of a summer palace at Werneck.
Hildebrandt’s employment by the Harrach family was stmil-
arly extensive and varied, though less has survived. His most
important task was to remodel the Mirabell palace for Johann
Ernst von Thun’s successor as archbishop of Salzburg, Franz
Anton von Harrach (1709-27). Every archbishop of Salzburg
tended to forsake the summer palace of his predecessor and to
construct something new or reconstruct another, and Franz
Anton was no exception. Within a year of his election, he
stopped work on Klesheim and dispensed with the services of
Fischer von Erlach, employing in his stead Hildebrandt, who
had already remodelled three Sc/i/6sser for his elder brother
Alois Thomas Raimund, to modernize Archbishop Wolf
Dietrich’s suburban villa called Mirabell, and to create new
interiors in the Residenz. In the Mirabell Hildebrandt dex-
terously altered windows, doors, and staircases, and mo-
dernized the elevations to create a modern palace, whilst building
up the old gate-house tower into a central feature that also
alluded to those of the Harrach Schlosser. A fire in 1818
unfortunately undid most of this work, but the main staircase
survives to testify to Hildebrandt’s skill in conversion: the old
Renaissance configuration of a succession of flights mounting a
central well, supported by slant-faced pillars, is lightened by the
use of Hildebrandt’s characteristic scroll-work balustrades all
the way up, and by the omission of the pillars in the top half, so
that the whole staircase opens out into a single area over the
frothy balustrades. Hildebrandt’s other significant work for a
member of the family was the Chapel of the Teutonic Knights
(now Seminary Chapel) at Linz (1717-21), for the Commander,
Johann Joseph von Harrach, executed to his designs by the
local Linz mason, J. M. Prunner. This 1s a small saucer-domed
oval structure with a west tower, attached to the former
Commandery, whose contrasted concave west front and con-
vex ‘arms’ foreshadow certain churches by Kilian ] gnaz Dient-
zenhofer.
The correspondence of the Schonborns and the Harrachs 1s
punctuated by statements of alarm at the way in which Hilde-
brandt’s plans ‘tend fiendishly towards the grandiose’, and
by references to his impatience over the constraints of
adhering to whatever had already been built or begun, when the
result might seem to threaten his reputation if he was regarded
as sole author. Yet, as we have seen, some of his most successful
buildings were collaborative, or adaptations of some existing
structure. Only one patron had the virtually unlimited
resources to realize Hildebrandt’s most extravagant designs —
Prince Eugene. Hildebrandt’s attempt to transform a great
abbey — GOttweig — on a yet more grandiose imperial scale
faltered and failed (as did the attempt to create an Austrian
Escorial at Klosterneuburg, to designs by Donato Felice d’Allio
427
266
264
70
200 Part IV Central and Eastern Europe
266 Gottweig, Salomon Kleiner’s engraving (1744) after Hildebrand1's ideal
design for ihe reconstruction of the abbey, c. 17t9. Vienna, Ost.
Nationalbibliothek
and Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach) because in Austria, as
opposed to the Empire at large, the great abbeys simply did not
have the resources or the freedom from state interference to
realize such projects.
Hildebrandt’s skill in making the most of an awkward site is
best seen in the Daun (later Kinsky) Palace that he built in
Vienna for the absent viceroy of Naples between 1713 and 1716.
The facade of this palace combines the basic scheme of a palace
generally accepted as having been designed by Fischer-— the
Batthyany/Schonborn (1699-1700)— with a portal combining
the motif of a pair of atlantes standing on round shafts already
employed on two other Viennese palaces, Fischerian vases, and
an old-fashioned broken-headed segmental pediment framing a
window, on which two female figures are perched, that is a
straight adaptation of Carlo Fontana’s portal of S. Marcello in
Rome. The eclecticism of the Daun facade is continued in the
interior. Here, following a columnar entrance-passage, Hilde-
brandt created a vaulted oval vestibule off which the staircase
opens to the left. This sequence is reminiscent of that of certain
Turinese palaces, which Hildebrandt would have encountered
as a young man. The staircase itself is the most ingenious
feature of the building. There were two problems: the long,
hemmed-in site meant both that the main rooms had to be on
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the second floor to obtain more light, and that the staircase
itself could receive light only from the courtyard. Hildebrandt
exploited these disadvantages by creating a crescendo of light
and openness. Whereas the Liechtenstein Town Palace, whose
main rooms were also on the second floor, had employed the
conventional welled staircase, though drawing this out rec-
tangularly, in the Daun Palace Hildebrandt suppressed the well,
placing all the rising flights of the staircase against the closed
wall along the outer side of the building, with corridor returns
against the windowed courtyard side. But whilst the first flight
is enclosed by the retaining walls and the saucer-and-groin
vaults of the underside of the upper flight, the second flight ts
open above, yielding a view into yet a third zone, that of a
continuous gallery on brackets below the frescoed ceiling,
whilst putti on pedestals, with scroll-work balustrades between,
replace the arcades of the lower part of the staircase. The idea is
that of the Mirabell stairs, but applied to a rectangular staircase
of a kind that arouses quite different expectations: and nothing
prepares one for the surprise of a third, and apparently in-
accessible, invisibly-lit zone between the upper corridor and the
ceiling.
The chief merit of the executed portions of Hildebrandt’s
tremendous plans for the virtually total reconstruction of the
Benedictine Abbey of Gottweig after the devastating fire of
1718 also resides in the staircase. Yet even this suffers from the
lack of detailing in proportion to its grandeur, caused by his
relinquishment of the responsibility for its execution. At Gott-
weig we encounter for the first time one of the vigorous abbots
266
of great monasteries, who. though often of relatively modest
birth. projected the reconstruction of their abbeys with the
assurance of the great princes that they had become by office. In
the case of the Imperial Free Abbeys ( Reichsabteien), whose
abbots were princes of the Empire, and of one or two of the
major Austrian subject abbeys with imperial connections, like
Melk or Klosterneuburg. such grandiose projects can be ex-
plained in part as political affirmations. The unusual thing
about Gottweig is that the abbot employed a metropolitan
architect, though the abbey itself lacked any special tie with the
imperial house: instead, this was a reflection of the personal
career of the abbot, Gottfried Bessel (1714-49), with whose
death all hope of realizing Hildebrandt’s plans in full came to an
end. Bessel was born in the territory of Mainz. where he entered
the service of Lothar Franz von Schonborn, through which he
came to the notice of the emperor. As a reward for serving him,
he was appointed abbot of Gottweig, from which he had once.
ironically. been expelled as a monk. The fire of 1718 gave him.
Hildebrandt, and Friedrich Carl von Schénborn their chance
to try something wholly new — the planning of an ideal abbey on
a dramatic rocky plateau. Letters tell of the three men spending
a whole day together. using Hildebrandt’s talents as an
architectural draughtsman, and of the resulting perfectly
symmetrical plan that fulfilled their stated intention of creating
something that ‘would not have much of a monkish flavour to
it’ — In conscious contrast to Melk.
Hildebrandt’s plan, cunningly incorporating one or two
parts of the old monastery spared by the fire, envisaged massive
bastioned fortifications surrounding the plateau, inside which
the abbey was to be placed, with the domed church on the
central axis at the rear of the huge first public court, and
mansard-roofed pavilions emerging from the giant ranges to
house the main representational features like the Library and
Kaisersaal. The two chamfered corners at the front of the
central court were each exclusively to house a ceremonial
staircase: in the event, the left hand one of these was the only
major representational feature of the abbey to be completed
(1739) on the scale of the original project. The model for these
stairs was clearly the autonomous staircase block at Pommers-
felden, and. as there. the stairs mounted only to the first floor,
inside a spacious chamber vaulted by a single frescoed ceiling
immediately under the roof. But whereas at Pommersfelden the
stairs form round an inner well and mount to a landing leading
to the vestibule and Festsaa/ on an axis with the entrance, with
Hildebrandt’s three-storeyed arcades forming an outer layer
disguising the barren walls, at Gottweig — where Hildebrandt
was no longer in control — the stairs climb the sides of the
chamber, returning in the centre to join a balustraded corridor
that weakly departs to the sides.
If Gottweig exhibits a steady dilution of intention by want of
resources, Prince Eugene's Hoff-, Lust-, und Gartengebaude
(the name ‘Belvedere’ was only applied to the complex in the
middle of the eighteenth century) illustrates the steady enhance-
ment of an originally modest plan for a garden palace, facili-
tated by the accretion of wealth and honour to its owner, the
victorious commander of the imperial forces against the French
and the Turks.?? In the Belvedere Hildebrandt succeeded in
creating a unique building expressive of Prince Eugene's special
status at Vienna: the cadet member of the ruling house of
Savoy, who was at the same time the commander-in-chief of the
imperial army and the absentee governor of the Spanish
Netherlands. Eugene required a building which was not only a
Austria 20]
garden palace like its neighbours 1n the suburbs of Vienna, but
also a building with representational pretensions; for he was
entitled to his own ‘court’ (of) as a member of a ruling house,
as well as being chosen to give audiences on behalf of the
emperor-—particularly to his humbled Turkish opponents.
Eugene was moreover a bachelor, and one who seemed sub-
limely indifferent to his official heir (his niece Princess Victoria,
who promptly set about selling his palaces and their contents
after his death). so that there was no need to provide apart-
ments for a possible family. He built purely for the pleasure that
it gave him and the employment that it gave others, and in his
carelessness about the eventual fate of his buildings, it would
not even appear that he shared the ambition of Sarah. Duchess
of Marlborough at Blenheim for her husband, to create a
permanent monument to himself as a hero. This is not to say
that any of these factors account for the Belvedere as Hilde-
brandt built it, but only that, in building it, Eugene and his
architect had a uniquely free hand.
Eugene began acquiring ground for gardens adjacent to the
Mansfeld-Fondi Palace in 1693, and by 1702 Hildebrandt was
enquiring about the prince's intentions over what had clearly
become a terraced, architectonic form of garden. By the time of
the map prepared in connection with the defence of Vienna in
1704 the plan of the garden palace at the foot of the hill (the
later Lower Belvedere) was established. whilst a true belvedere,
or gazebo, was planned at the top of the hill on the emplace-
ment of the later Upper Belvedere. The Lower Belvedere could
not be built until the end of the War of the Spanish Succession,
between 1714 and 1716. It isan unremarkable building from the
outside, orginally planned with a courtyard enclosed by wings
with angled ends, and with a two-storey central pavilion
housing the saloon only projecting above the roof-line from the
broken-forward central section of the main one-storey range.
The interior is lavishly decorated with stucco and stucco-
marbling (carried up into the vault in the Marble Gallery) by
Santino Buss), and with frescoes glorifying the prince as Apollo
by Martino Altomonte. The palace thus combines a representa-
tional role with the qualities of the more accessible maison a
litalienne derived from the Trianon and the Chateau du Val.
The Lower Belvedere was quite self-sufficient, but in 1720 the
decision must have been taken to build another palace twice as
grand on the site of the gazebo at the top of the hill (thus
reversing the sequence of events at Sch6nbrunn), which was
executed in an extraordinarily short space of time in 172] and
1722. It is scarcely credible that the two palaces were built
within seven years of one another by the same architect. In
place of the monotonous rectangular blocks and stolid detail-
ing of the Lower Belvedere, the Upper Belvedere appears as a
fantastic concatenation of different-shaped roofs over an
exuberantly ornamented base. Yet one contained the germ of
the other. It was in the Lower Belvedere that Hildebrandt
escaped from his half-hearted attempts to emulate Fischer's
expression of the central saloon as a distinct volume, and
recognized that his inclination was for a differentiated roof line
above a horizontally united base. The central saloon of the
Upper Belvedere emerges as one roof between two flanking
267 Overleaf left Vienna, Upper Belvedere, sala terrena
268 Overleaf right J. A. Feichimayr. Putio in the pilgrimage-church of
Neu-Birnau
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269 Opposite Steinhausen, capital by D. Zimmermann, afler 1728
270 Above Vienna, entrance front of the Upper Belvedere by Hildebrandt,
1721-22
roofs distinct from those of the rest of the range, just as in the
Lower Belvedere, save that the differentiation is carried further
and extended to the whole building. The paired pilasters of the
central block of the Lower Belvedere are used throughout the
Upper Belvedere. The Upper Belvedere, however, as if licensed
by the difference of its scale and pretensions, employs the full
repertory of Hildebrandt’s idiosyncratic Ornament: tapering
pilasters, some of them labelled with a curious ornament
Austria 20:
derived from Mannerist pattern-books, some cross-banded,
and others with grotesque face-capitals of almost Gothic
ancestry: windows with indented jambs, ornate frames, and
curvilinear pediments; and, on the lake front. the Borromini-
esque pediment over the portico- a feature that Hildebrandt
had already employed on the GOllersdorf and Halbthurn
(Harrach) Schlésser, and that was to become almost a trade-
mark denoting his intervention or influence.
The sloping ground on which the palace was sited meant that
the garden side was lower than the lake side, which almost
appears as a pretext for Hildebrandt’s most ingenious staircase.
This was so designed that the official visitor. approaching from
the side of the cour d’honneur (the lake front), should be able to
mount the gently ascending single flights of stairs leading to the
211
267
206 Part 1V Central and Eastern Europe
saloon. These stairs mount up either side of the rectangular
chamber, whose vaulting springs from corbels supported by
atlantid-herms, to meet in a plattorm before the door of the
saloon. Between them, a third flight plunges downward under
the balcony of the platform, to the sa/a terrena acting as a
prelude to the gardens on the other side. Against Hildebrandt’s
wishes, Prince Eugene at first had this covered with a ceiling,
but when part of it collapsed, Hildebrandt was able to vault it as
he had intended, supporting the arches dividing the sail vaults
on massive atlantes, with military trophies above the entabla-
ture, in unmistakable allusion to Eugene’s military prowess and
conquests. The piano nobile 1s given over entirely to the private
and state apartments of the prince, with the chapel and three
particularly exquisite cabinets in the four octagonal corner-
towers that Hildebrandt appears to have incorporated as a
deliberately archaic note, as if in make-believe that they were
adopted from some older castle. The interior decoration, for
which Hildebrandt used the Frenchman Claude Le Fort du
Plessy as dessinateur, just as Eugene borrowed Dominique
Girard from Max Emanuel of Bavaria for the gardens, 1s
yet more sumptuous than that of the Lower Belvedere. The
stucco is again by the immigrant Comasque Santino Bussi,
but much of the painting 1s, significantly, by Italian-based
271 Above Upper Belvedere, staircase, stucco by Santino Bussi
272 Opposite Melk, interior of the abbey church by Jakob Prandtauer,
built 1702-14
208 Part IV Central and Eastern Europe
Itahans —- Giacomo del Po and Francesco Solimena.
The Belvedere is Hildebrandt’s supreme achievement and
shows him at the height of his powers, finally in possession of an
idiom wholly his own. It is therefore the more regrettable that,
though he continued to work for his circle of magnates, and
indeed for Prince Eugene himself at Schlosshof, he never again
had carte blanche on a grand scale as he did here. His work at
Schlosshof, though of a high order, as Bellotto’s set of
paintings of it testifies, was concentrated upon the perish-
able feature of the grounds, of which only sublime fragments
remain. The grounds were also the raison d’étre of the Harrach
Garden Palace (1727-35), a sober building constructed round
an earlier fabric. His loss of the commission to rebuild the
Hofburg, and the failure to complete Gottweig, have deprived
us of his two most ambitious later projects, even if it 1s not
certain that their more public nature was suited to his talents.
His most fruitful work henceforward was as the architectural
adviser of Friedrich Carl von Schonborn, who, after his election
as prince-bishop of both Wurzburg and Bamberg in 1729,
finally laid down his office of vice-chancellor and went to reside
in Franconia in 1735. The effect of Hildebrandt’s advice and
interventions will be taken up in the section on palaces.
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The introduction to Part IV has already mentioned the divide
between what may be called the ‘metropolitan’ and the
‘country-based” architects in Austria, a divide that concerns
both the kind of commissions involved, and the nature and
training of the men that executed them. Fischer and Hilde-
brandt, and certain other later architects who have not been
considered, like the younger Fischer and Jean-Nicolas Jadot,
operated in a European context. Their education and travels
made them familiar with the most significant buildings outside
Austria, to which their own make frequent reference. The
country-based architects worked instead within a guild tradi-
tion, relying, particularly for certain forms of vault and arch,
upon a repertoire of pragmatically evolved forms, some of
which may have even have reflected the profound knowledge of
vaulting and stereotomy accumulated in the mediaeval lodges.
Unshackled by notions of correctness, novel elements in their
work resulted not merely from the borrowing of features from
273 Below Melk, view of the abbey from the Danube
274 Opposite Melk church, detail showing dome frescoed by
J.M. Rottmayr, 1719
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the buildings of the metropolitan architects — asin Prandtauer’s
entrance block at Melk. or Prunner’s adoption of Fischerian
rounded central projections and MHhildebrandtian _ pedi-
ments — but also from spontaneous invention — as in the towers
of Zwett] and Durnstein. or Prandtauer’s terrace at Melk.
In their inventiveness they were congenial to their clients, for
whom architectural propriety took second place to
ingenuity—a qualitv as prized by them in architecture as in a
sermon, or in those favournte devices found adorning so many
South German Baroque buildings — the emblem and the chron-
osticon. The metropolitan architects were employed by the
emperor and the magnates~— who also held the bishoprics — to
build villas and palaces. and only exceptionally churches: the
country-based architects were primarily employed by abbots
and priors. who were rarely well-born. to build their mon-
asteries and churches, and the occasional town house in pro-
vincial towns for the local aristocracy and their monastic
emplovers.*?
Whereas, as we have seen, the metropolitan architects virtu-
ally routed their Italian predecessors as adversaries (though
some semi-assimilated Italians hke Donato Felice d'Alho and
Nicolaus Pacassi were subsequently still to find commissions).
the first of the native-born country-based architects. Jakob
Prandtauer (1660—-1726).°* simply succeeded to the monastic
practice of the last dominant Comasque. Carlo Antonio Car-
lone (71708). He succeeded Carlone at Kremsmiinster. Gar-
sten, and St Florian. after proving himself independently at
Melk. ‘Native’ 1s not strictly accurate. for in contemporary
terms Prandtauer, like his nephew Munggenast and a number of
other craftsmen in Austria, was a ‘foreigner from the Tyrol.
which. with Bavaria, helped to repopulate Lower Austria with
people and skills at the end of the seventeenth century. after the
ravages of the Turks and repeated plague. Prandtauer. who had
been trained as a sculptor, settled in St Polten in 1689. in the
quarter belonging to the Austin Priorv. and set about extending
his competence to building.
He was first referred to as a Baumeister in 1695, yetin 1701 he
was already being invited to rebuild the church of the major
Lower Austrian abbey, at Melk. The man who invited him.
Berthold Dietmayr (abbot 1700-39), the son of a monastic
official, had himself only just been elected at the age of thirty.
and was to be one of the most dynamic of all the Baroque
prelates.-> He invited designs for the church from a couple of
Viennese masons and a stuccador (significantly, not from any
metropolitan architect), and sent Prandtauer off to look at
Carlo Antonio Carlone’s church at St Florian with the prior. In
view of this. and of the fact that Prandtauer is nowhere
described as the inventor of the plan of the church at Melk, the
overall design should probably be regarded as a product of the
abbot’s selection of particular features from churches and
designs that had pleased him, welded into a whole by Prand-
tauer. These features might have included the decision to have a
drummed dome. a twin-towered facade, and sail vaults (derived
from St Florian—they were introduced to the Empire by the
Comasques).*° Prandtauer’s personal contribution should then
be sought in the detailing—in the busily layered and broken
entablatures of the facade. the configuration of the dome, the
bowed-out arch of the organ-gallery. and above all in the
interplay of the concave, layered entablature of the nave with
the broken-forward galleries beneath.
The distinctive profile of these broken-forward gallery arches
was to be a characteristic feature of the country-based archi-
Austria 211
275 Opposite St Florian Abbey, upper flight of the staircase designed by
Carlo Antonio Carlone and built (with alterations) by Prandtauer, 1706-14
276 Above St Florian, exterior of the staircase
tects. work. Whilst the inspiration for these goes back to
Fischer von Erlach, it seems probable that Fischer himself was
dependent for the realization of his ideas in stone upon the
pragmatic knowledge of stereotomy built up in the marble
quarries and stone-masons’ guilds. These gallery arches are
somewhat obscured at Melk —it1s indeed easy not to notice that
the middle pair have a subtly different profile — by the con-
version of the gallery into a succession of /oges. These are due to
the theatrical designer Antonio Beduzzi. who also provided
designs for the portal and the main altars. This intervention,
and Rottmayr's illusionistic frescoes in vaults not really de-
signed to receive them. again illustrate the role of the abbot in
orchestrating the final ensemble.
Opposition amongst the monks forced the abbot to proceed
cautiously with his plans for rebuilding the whole abbey:
though an overall design for this was first spoken of in 1712. the
cramped position and unspectacular design of the staigs. for
which Prandtauer made a model in 1715. suggest that the
reconstruction had to proceed piecemeal. To face the outside
world. Prandtauer created an entrance front in 1723-24 whose
palatial elevations are clearly indebted to Fischer's Trautson
Palace. Between this and the river front of the abbey he
enclosed the separate courts between enormously long ranges.
barely relieved by breaks or adornment, that sophisticated
contemporaries like the Schonborns condemned as ‘monkish’.
which vet not only have a grandeur of their own. but also serve
as a foil to his stroke of genius — the front of the abbey where it
towers over the Danube.
Here there had previously been an enclosed atrium-like
cloister before the church. Prandtauer converted this into a
forecourt contained by a massive passage with rounded
bastion-like projections over the cliff-face. bearing a terrace
266
212 Part IV Central and Eastern Europe
*
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277 Si Florian, entrance porial, execuled 1o an enriched version of
Prandtauer’s design by G. B. Bianco and Leonhard Sattler, 1712-13
connecting the Library and the Marble Hall. But the mock-
fortification appearance of this passage (which can be com-
pared with Hildebrandt’s scenographically rather than ear-
nestly meant bastions at Gottweig) is contradicted by the
windows and the giant Serliana opening in the centre, by means
of which Prandtauer attains his most characteristic effect — that
of creating an optical link between within and without, making
both a vantage-point for the inmate, and a device inviting the
gaze of the spectator. Prandtauer concentrated the whole visual
impact of the abbey upon this front, which would be the one
seen by the traveller descending the major traffic artery of the
Danube. For instead of placing the Library and the Marble
Hall as two pavilions breaking through the middle of their
ranges, as became the norm after C. A. Carlone’s introduction
of this device from palace to monastic architecture at Garsten
and St Florian, he made them into spurs projecting slightly
inwards from the long conventual ranges, framing the twin-
towered facade and dome. Prandtauer died before the Marble
Hall was completed or the Library begun, but since Abbot
Berthold continued to construct them using only an executant
mason, before finally appointing Prandtauer’s nephew, Joseph
Munggenast, as his successor, it cannot be doubted that they
were to his design. Characteristic of Prandtauer is the almost
total breaching of the wall between the pilasters by fenestration,
with the abbreviated window entablatures of his later years.
The reputation that Prandtauer had begun to establish at
Melk made him the natural successor as monastic architect to
Carlo Antonio Carlone when the latter died in 1708, notably at
the Austin Priory of St Florian.*’ Here, Carlone had rebuilt the
church (still in its mediaeval position to the north of the
monastery) as a twin-towered basilica with a calotte over the
crossing and sail vaults over the nave. The lower part of the
church, with its massive half-columns on high plinths and
heavy balconies (cf. Salzburg Cathedral) was stuccoed by his
brother Bartolomeo Carlone with the strongly sculptural
white stucco characteristic of the churches decorated by this
Comasque family of masons and stuccadors (e.g. Schlierbach,
Garsten, and Passau Cathedral), but a change of prior resulted
in inappropriate illusionistic frescoes in the vaults instead of
stucco. Carlone’s origina] design for the monastery envisaged
housing the representational] parts as spurs projecting from the
enclosed courts, but in a second plan made some time before he
died he had taken the momentous step of housing them in
pavilions rearing out of the middle of these ranges, separately
roofed in French chateau fashion. lt now seems clear that it was
also Carlone who had not only (before Pommersfelden) decided
to house the ceremonial staircase in one such pavilion, but also
to open this outwards in a series of arcades, ramping-arched
below and round-arched above. As designed by Carlone,
however, the stairs were sealed off by arcades (cf. Klesheim)
from the corridors running the whole length of the prelatial and
guest ranges behind them, to which they gave access. Prand-
tauer suppressed these arcades in the upper storey, unifying
stairs and corridor under one vault, opened up the central bay
above the entrance with a massive arch, made a recession in the
balustraded platform behind it to attract the eye farther in-
wards, and designed remarkable open-work screens on the
exterior and interior, so as to admit the maximum amount of
light. As at Melk, his aim was to dissolve the barriers between
within and without. At St Florian Prandtauer further designed
the bombastic Marble Hall, whose decoration glorifying the
emperor and Prince Eugene and their victories over the Turks 1s
so little overtly religious that Bartolomeo Altomonte’s fresco
(1724) shows personifications of Austria and Hungary rever-
encing Jupiter trampling the Turk underfoot. This was
appropriate to a part of the monastery which belonged to the
secular sphere, being the climax of a set of apartments housing
distinguished visitors, as both the monastic traditions of hos-
pitality and the monastery’s political role required. In Gotthart
Hayberger’s later Library (1744-51). which J.C. Jegg’s un-
dulating bookcases make into a masterpiece amongst Austrian
monastic libraries, the balance was redressed. The prior de-
clined Daniel Gran’s idea of a fresco showing the Blessings of
Austria under the Habsburgs, and opted for the blessings
springing from the marriage of Virtue and Wisdom instead.
Prandtauer was succeeded by his nephew, Joseph Mung-
genast (1680—1741).2° at Melk and Herzogenburg (rebuilt
piecemeal from 17141f), just as he had succeeded Carlone, but it
appears that he had already begun to delegate lesser com-
missions to him before his death, notably Durnstein. The story
276
270
pags)
280
of the rebuilding of this Austin Priory shows tt to be, in many
ways, the most remarkable of all of the Baroque monasteries.
Using the most slender resources, but exploiting his con-
nections with the main Austin Priory of St Dorothy at Vienna
and with his Benedictine neighbours at Melk, Prior Hierony-
mus Ubelbacher (1710-40) managed to procure designs and
work from some of the leading craftsmen of his day. His diary
shows him thoughtfully noting what was being built elsewhere,
for possible emulation. and narrowly specifying from what
models and engravings his craftsmen should work.*°
Prior Hieronymus began by rebuilding the monastery,
probably to an overall design by Prandtauer, but employing
Munggenast (who became an independent master-builder in
1717) or his foreman from at least 1719. The parts of the
monastery were rebuilt where they stood, with no attempt to
rationalize the mediaeval jumble. As a result, the most ornate
feature, the portal leading to the church, does not stand in front
of the church, but at one end of a narrow passage leading toa
door in the north-west corner of it. The portal was begun in
1725, and it seems clear that it, like the church tower (1725-33).
was the result of collaboration between Munggenast, who would
have made the working drawings, and Matthias Steinl. who
would have provided the original design. Steinl (c. 1644-1727)
began his career as court carver in ivory, but as a corrodian of
the Austin Priory of St Dorothy in Vienna, expanded into an
‘Ingenieur’ employed by the order to design not only quasi-
architectural features like high altars and pulpits, but also the
rebuilt facade of St Dorothy's itself3° At this period the word
‘Ingenieur’ could either mean an ‘engineer’ in the military sense,
or simply an ‘inventor’ of designs. Steinl’s designs reflect his
training as a sculptor, and as such he needed the assistance of a
mason to ensure their structural stability. Both the portal and
the tower of Diirnstein are essentially conceived in sculptural
and symbolic terms: the portal—which 1s shaped like an
altar—illustrating the theme of redemption: and the tower.
whose design is concentrated upon the two angled faces greet-
ing those who come up or down the Danube, framing figures of
the two protectors of those travelling by water— the Virgin and
St John Nepomuk. The church itself (1721-23). whose con-
struction, rather unusually for Austria at this period, is of the
wall-pillar type. with sail vaults, has not been unanimously
attributed to any architect. The old-fashioned wall-pillar plan
and the undulating profile of the two convex galleries with a
concave gallery between, all on three-dimensional arches,
suggest Prandtauer, whilst the detailing of the choir suggests
Munggenast. Steinl’s name has also been put forward, but it 1s
less easy to imagine his being responsible for a design in which
structural subtleties like the bowed-out arches of the galleries,
with pierced vaults behind (cf. the portal of the Court Stables at
Salzburg) play such an important role. The church is exquisitely
furnished, to detailed specifications laid down by Prior
Hieronymus, whose proudest achievement was his acquisition
of the stuccador of Prince Eugene's palaces, Santino Bussi, to
create the vaults so unusually stuccoed with scenes in relief,
instead of frescoes.
Munggenast and Steinl had collaborated on the design of a
church tower once before, at the Cistercian Abbey of Zwettl
(1722-8). Here, it seems to have been Munggenast who began
by providing a conventional, planar design for the tower, to
which Steinl then imparted life and plasticity, giving the fagade
an undulating profile, and creating great volutes and a bulbous
base where the trunk of the tower itself began. Twin towers
In
|
re)
Austria
were the norm in Austra at this period, but a number of
Cistercian abbeys employed a single west tower. possibly in a
casuistical attempt to adhere to the letter of the Cistercian ban
on stone towers by maintaining that these were an organic part
of the fagade. Such lack of regard for the statutes of the order
mav be contrasted at Zwettl with the remarkable decision taken
at the same time to demolish the old Romanesque nave and
raise it to the height of the Gothic hall-choir, using the same
architectural forms: this at a period when the transformation
into Baroque forms of earlier churches with fresco and stucco
was the rage in South Germany.
Munggenast, like Prandtauer. was employed by a number of
monasteries to regularize and modernize their conventual
buildings. Only at the Benedictine Abbey of Altenburg. how-
278 Melk, interior of the Library designed by Prandtauer and completed
by Joseph Munggenas!, 1726-31
ever, did Munggenast have the chance to rebuild on a large
scale, not only the church, but also representational rooms,
including a great Library. He cunningly contrived to put the
church inside the fabric of its mediaeval predecessor as a
spacious oval nave preceded by a short entrance bay containing
the organ gallery, and succeeded by a long monks’ choir
culminating in a saucer-domed sanctuary. The treatment of the
oval nave was inspired by that of St Peter's. Vienna, from which
Munggenast adopted the oval windows in the pendentives.
These, however, are now flanked by pilasters, thus giving the
effect of a quasi-drum in the absence of a real drum under the
oval dome above. The object of this was to bring the fresco
near, the fresco itself (by Paul Troger (1733—34)) being no
longer some glory of miscellaneous saints in heaven, but a
composite depiction of the “Woman clothed with the Sun’
described in the Book of Revelations. The desire to dispense
with a drum at the base of domes, so as to make frescoes with
their more complex iconography both more legible and more
214 Part 1V Central and Eastern Europe
immediate, spread from South Germany to Austria (hence also
the suppression of the drum when the Piarist Church at Vienna
was finally vaulted, to the benefit of Maulpertsch’s frescoes).
The high colouring of Troger’s fresco, and more especially, the
brilliant blue worn by the Woman of the Apocalypse, 1s taken up
by F. J. Holzinger’s lavish stucco and stucco-marbling — again a
rapprochement with the Rococo churches of Bavaria and
Swabia.
The Library (1740-42) is the most ambitious of all the
Austrian monastic libraries, the equal of the church in scale and
sumptuousness, and, in conception, taking its departure from
the {mperial Library (and possibly from the Gallery at Clagny).
The monastic buildings at Altenburg were not replanned
symmetrically round the church, but built with enclosed courts
am
> Senne
ee
+
279 Above St Florian, Marble Hall by Prandtauer, built 1718-22,
decorated 1723-24. Stucco-marbling by F. J. Holzinger, fresco by
Bartolomeo Altomonte with quadratura by Ippolito Sconzani
280 Opposite Diirnslein Priory, tower designed by Matthias Steinl and built
by Joseph Munggenast, 1725-33
and with projecting ranges linking the abbey more firmly
with the landscape. One of these was built to contain the
library over a massive substructure housing a erypt-like room
decorated with grotesques whose purpose has never been
properly elucidated. The Library consists of a domed centre
with two arms — as in the Imperial Library — but with saucer
domes over the ends of the arms as well. The amount of space
4 gh. “
4) By ieee a\
| Mkt a oe
216 Part IV Central and Eastern Europe
SD
< ie GR} ‘
281 Durnstein, interior of the church 1721-23, stucco by Santino Bussi
provided for books 1s minimal -— there is not even a second tier of
stacks reached by a gallery — instead, the upper zone and the
vaults are given over to a series of frescoes by Troger glorifying
the various branches of learning, and lavish stucco and stucco-
marbling by J.M. Flor. The predominant colours are again, as
in the church, blue and reddish-brown. More than any other
library, save that of Admont, this one proclaims itself as an
affirmation of the special role of the older, country-based orders
— the cloistered pursuit of learning. The Festsaa/, by contrast,
here takes its place as merely one of a set of moderate-sized
‘Marble Apartments’ for distinguished guests.
There is one further country-based architect of this gener-
ation who merits attention—Johann Michael Prunner
(1669-1739).3! Born in Linz, after a period of Wanderschaft
whose itinerary must have included Prague he settled in Linz as
city mason in 1705. As the capital of Upper Austria, Linz
afforded Prunner more commissions in the way of building
town houses for the nobility and churches for the various
religious orders than did St Podlten to Prandtauer or Mung-
genast. One of these churches, that of the Commandery of the
Teutonic Knights, Prunner built to designs supplied by Hilde-
brandt (1718-25). Prunner also worked in Passau and Regens-
burg. He did, however, work for a great abbey on one occasion,
when he built the church at Stadl-Paura for Maximilian Pagl,
the abbot of Lambach.?? Pagl was, like Ubelbacher of Diirn-
to
stein, a man who took a keen interest in the planning and
decoration of all hts projects. Though the church at Stadl-Paura
was built in honour of the Trinity in fulfilment of a vow made
when the plague of 1713 (the same plague that gave rise to
the building of the Karlskirche) threatened Lambach, Pagl also
saw this as an opportunity to realize an ambition that he had
already nurtured to build a triangular church. He therefore
obtained from Prunner plans for a centrally-planned church
with three identical facades framed by three towers. In order to
perform their function, the towers had to be canted, so that the
resulting fagades bear a distinct resemblance to that of St
Peter's, Vienna (which was erected by a Confraternity of the
Holy Trinity—making one wonder if Prunner did not have
access to some project of Hildebrandt’s for a Trinitarian re-
planning of that church). Each portal was dedicated to a
member of the Trinity, round whom the symbolism of the altar
in the apse facing the portal was also designed. When it came to
the decoration of the dome of the church with frescoes by Carlo
Carlone in tllusionistic settings by Francesco Messenta
(17)9-23), a change of plan was made, possibly suggested by
the latter, as a result of which the retables of the altars were
merely painted on the walls of the apses. which were cut
through to reveal the altarpieces painted upon the back walls of
the towers behind — a device which may have been derived from
Bernini's Altieri Chapel in S. Francesco a Ripa, or from certain
Genoese altars with sculptural groups by Maragliano. Every
item of decoration in the church plays its part in the Trinitarian
symbolism of the whole.
With the deaths of Hildebrandt and Joseph Munggenast in
the first half of the 1740s, the era of creative architects in
Austria in both the capital and the countryside was virtually at
an end. Maria Theresa had first to fight for her throne and to
attempt to wrest back Silesia from Frederick the Great of
Prussia in the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven
Years War. Thereafter she, like her son and successor, Joseph
II, concentrated more upon reforming and rationalizing the
laws and administration of Austria, in order to emulate Prussia,
than on building. The empress and Joseph JI both lived simply,
and her piety was private, whilst he was a deist. The great
abbeys were prevented by a combination of a shortage of funds
and governmental interference from embarking on any further
grandiose projects — as the melancholy failure to complete the
Austrian Escorial — the Abbey-Residenz of Klosterneuburg —
reveals.2> Only in the remote province of Styria were fresh
projects and ideas to be found.
There, the son of a masons’ foreman in Vienna, Joseph
Hueber (?—1787), had succeeded by ability and marriage to the
practice of the last of the dynasties of local welsche masons
(another branch of the Carlones) in the capital, Graz.** From
there he built two pilgrimage-churches- St Veit am Vogau
(1748-5)) and the Weizbergkirche (1656-58). These are un-
usual in that they combine a wall-pillar plan with a vaulting
arrangement that creates a centralizing effect in the middle of
the nave. Though comparisons have been drawn with
J. M. Fischer’s churches in Bavaria and Swabia, it seems more
likely that the centralizing idea comes from Munggenast and his
son's churches at Altenburg and Herzogenburg, whilst the wall-
pillar plan was introduced to Styria by the Comasques. At the
Weizbergkirche, where the central bay is distinguished by a
saucer dome and columns on either side of the chamfered
pillars, the hybrid is particularly successful, combining the
receding stage-like effect — with the high altar as the focus — of
~~]
Austria 2
282 Top Altenburg Abbey, interior of the Library buill by Munggenast,
wilh frescoes by Paul Troger and stucco by Johann Michael Flor,
1740-42
283 Above Admont Abbey, interior of the Library built by Joseph Hueber,
with frescoes by Bartolomeo Altomonte, 1774-76
283
218 Part IV Central and Eastern Europe
the wall-pillar church, with the revelation of successive spaces.
Examination of the Weizberg church encourages the opinion
that it was Hueber who designed the last of the great Baroque
libraries, at Admont (c. 1770). This is the only feature to survive
from the Baroque abbey, which was partially rebuilt in the mid-
century to an elephantine overall design by the Steyr architect
Gotthard Hayberger (who also built the library at St Florian).
Nothing either in Hayberger’s plan or tn his other work
indicates that he was capable of the spatial] imagination shown
in the library at Admont, which consists of a saucer-domed
central space defined by wall-pillars faced by half-columns,
between arms each divided above into three sail vaults, but
bound together below by continuous bookcases. The icono-
graphic programme of the library, conststing of rather arid
frescoes depicting personifications of all the branches of learn-
ing by Bartolomeo Altomonte (1774-76), remarkable sculpture
from an earlier projected library by Thaddaus Stammel, includ-
ing depictions of the ‘Four Last Things’ (cf. the portal at
Dirnstein), and herm-pilasters representing all the most
famous artists of antiquity and the modern world (including an
invented son of Durer’s!), represents an apt summing-up of the
programmatic ambitions of Austrian architecture and de-
coration.*>
Bavaria and Swabia
Outside Austria, the range of activity open to an architect in the
Empire was much more limited. 1n the absence of a focal capital
or a wealthy aristocracy based on the land, the major commis-
sions were those afforded either by one, or by a group, of the
innumerable courts scattered through Germany, or, in the
South, by the great monasteries. Balthasar Neumann was
exceptional in being extensively employed on secular and
ecclesiastical commissions alike. Johann Michael Fischer’s
tombstone, by contrast, proudly recalls that he worked for 22
monasteries and built 32 churches, but is vague about secular
work, whilst Francois Cuvilliés, though consulted about the
construction of palaces from Munich to Cassel, was never
entrusted with a commission to build a church, even if, as the
elector’s architect, he was asked for advice on several.
To this dichotomy of employment corresponded a di-
chotomy of training; in general, the court architects were for-
eigners or foreign-trained, and they were of higher social status
either through birth or through military rank, service as a
military engineer being the one way to acquire a theoretical as
well as practical knowledge of architecture, through the study
of the art of fortification. The ecclesiastical architects custom-
arily came from within the guild tradition, even if their training
was not always that of a mason. Neumann again, as a craft-
trained bell- and artillery-founder who was given the opport-
unity to study military architecture as an officer, and rose to be
a colonel, bestraddles the two spheres. In other words, the
division that was found in Austria between the metropolitan
and the country-based architects is repeated in the rest of the
Empire in a dilferent form, in the division between court
architects and craft architects. The latter had to be inscribed in
the guild of a town, and unlike the city masons of Vienna, the
Oedtls and the Janggls, who generally worked as the executive
masons of the metropolitan architects and were debarred from
working in the country, found their most fruitful employment
working for the great rural abbeys. Some, like the Asams, might
not even belong to a masons’ guild, but then the exempt status
of the great abbeys released them from guild control. That the
gulf between court and country architecture is not greater is
largely due to the decoration applied to buildings; the Asams,
Johann Baptist Zimmermann and a host of other stuccadors
and frescoists, were able to work indifferently on court or
ecclesiastical commissions, even if the most prestigious of these,
such as the Aaisersaal and Staircase at Wurzburg, or the major
ceilings of the Neues Schloss at Stuttgart, were entrusted to
foreigners.
Bavaria was a relatively compact state, smaller than Austria,
but ruled by a dynasty, the Wittelsbachs, that nursed the
ambition to head the Empire should the male line of the
Habsburgs fatl°° This, and not extravagance alone, accounts
for much of the gilded and silvered splendour of the apartments
in the palaces built by the Electors Max Emanuel (1679-
1726) and Carl Albert (1726-45) — briefly but miserably the
Emperor Charles VI]. Max Emanuel’s differences with Leopold
I, after a heroic youth spent fighting the Turk on his behalf, led
to his exile during the War of the Spanish Succession, from
284 Weingarten, pulpit by Fidel Sporer, 1762
i
“~
220 Part IV Central and Eastern Europe
1704—15, first in the Netherlands (of which he had earher been
governor for the Habsburgs), and later at St Cloud. Hence not
only his acquisition as a page of the stunted Walloon, Fran¢ois
Cuvilliés, whose architectural aptitudes only later became
apparent, but also his enduring belief in the superiority of
everything French, to the extent that he felt himself an exile
amongst his own subjects, and employed Frenchmen or
French-trained craftsmen whenever he could. Consideration of
the palaces and pavilions built for Max Emanuel and Carl
Albert will be deferred to a later chapter, but the intensity of the
French influence prevailing at court in Bavaria must always be
borne in mind, both as a foil to the very different climate in
which ecclesiastical architecture was created, and as an impor-
tant factor in the diffusion of French-influenced ornament into
the latter sphere.
Bavaria was traditionally and zealously Catholic — the
Wittelsbachs could indeed be said to have rescued Southern
Germany and Austria for the Roman Church — and contained
both important monasteries, whose foundation went back to
285 Weingarten, ideal project for the reconstruction of the abbey. Afler(?)
Father Beda Stattmilller’s design of 1723. Benediktinerabtet Weingarten
A pears we nd
TD Hu U4
—
>»
ue!
the missionary days of Christianity in Germany, and innumer-
able pilgrimages, mostly fostered by the orders. Ultimate
control over the administration and expenditure of these
monasteries was nonetheless exercised by a state body called the
Spiritual Council. As a result, they were frequently held back
from reconstructing their conventual buildings, whilst being
more lavish in the adornment than in the structural ambition of
their churches. As in Austria, spiritual control over the
monasteries and over the parishes was exercised by bishops
who were also the rulers of small ecclesiastical enclaves within
or beyond the borders — in this case Freising, Eichstatt, and
Augsburg. Monastic affiliations and ecclesiastical jurisdictions
sometimes affected the locations in which craftsmen and artists
worked.
Bavaria contained one Benedictine abbey. Wessobrunn,
(founded by a member of the dynasty that had preceded the
Wittelsbachs), that helped to foster one of the most remarkable
examples of collective genius in the history of art: the so-called
Wessobrunn School of stuccadors.*’ Craft activity in Bavaria
was regulated by a network of guilds in the capital, Munich,
and in most of the lesser towns. One such town to the south of
Munich, Weilheim., fed the capital with sculptors and masons
just at the time, around the turn of the sixteenth century, when
Italians and Itahan-trained Netherlanders were introducing
the art of Renaissance stucco-work to the capital, in the Church
of St Michael and the Residenz. Developing out of this associ-
ation, the craftsmen from the hamlets nestling round Wesso-
brunn, which fell within the jurisdiction of Weilheim, began to
specialise in stucco, as did the masons of another town called
Miesbach. During the Thirty Years War the Wessobrunners
were already working as far away as Innsbruck In the Tyrol.
After the war, whereas the Miesbachers concentrated more
upon masonry than stucco, the Wessobrunners succeeded in
establishing a partnership with the Vorarlberg masons, work-
ing chiefly for the exempt abbeys of Swabia. In this partnership
they employed a distinctive acanthus-based decorative reper-
toire, that was indebted to French engravings for 1ts ornamental
vocabulary, but to the Wessobrunners’ own training as masons
for its intelligent and lucid relation to what was built. This
combination of ornamental modernity and sympathetic under-
standing of structure was to be a permanent characteristic of
Wessobrunn stucco till the end of the eighteenth century.
In the 1720s it began to look as if the cohesion of the School
was being threatened, both by the emergence of a new form of
French-influenced ribbon-work ornament whose subordin-
ation to large illusionistic frescoes undermined the Wesso-
brunners’ creative role, and by the action of several of them in
settling elsewhere, and pursuing other skills: Domunikus
Zimmermann, first in Fussen and then in Landsberg, learning
the art of scagliola and then that of masonry; Johann Baptist
Zimmermann, settling successively in Miesbach, Ottobeuren
and Freising, before becoming court stuccador at Munich,
whilst branching out into fresco-painting in addition; Joseph
Schmuzer, following his ancestor Johann, and turning more to
masonry; the Feichtmayr and Finsterwalder brothers, settling
in Augsburg. However, this last move gave a decisive new
impetus to the Wessobrunn School. Augsburg was the centre in
South Germany not only of ornamental engravers — often
pirating the latest French prints — but also of fresco-painting; as
a result, the Wessobrunners based there had immediate access
to the latest developments in ornament, and, by associating
with the painters, evolved a kind of decoration that was
254
complementary to their frescoes, which themselves began to
turn their back on pure illusionism. A decisive final factor was
that the brothers broadened their team to include another
Wessobrunner, J.G. Ubelhér. who had worked with J.B.
Zimmermann on the court commissions at Munich, and
brought with him a familiarity with the vital element of Rococo
ornament — the ambiguous, shelly substance called rocaille —
which was evolved in the decoration of the Reiche Zimmer and
the Amalienburg. It was the Feichtmayrs and Ubelhér who at
Diessen in 1734-36 created for the first ttme on a monumental
scale the rocaille cartouche ornament that was to prevail over
the whole of South Germany, and influence developments as
far afield as Prussia and the South Tyrol for the next generation.
Swabia. in contrast to Bavaria, was a land of fragmented
sovereignties, chiefly of Reichsstifre and Reichsstadte—\mperial
Free Monasteries and Imperial Free Towns. The latter were.
with the single exception of Augsburg, whose significance has
been alluded to above, no longer of any great importance; the
monasteries (one or two of which were subsequently to be
subsumed into Switzerland rather than into Germany) on the
other hand felt an unparalleled need to give built expression to
their sovereign status and to the religious triumph (as they saw
it) of the Church and their orders.*° This they did by rebuilding
their monastic complexes symmetrically on a monumental
scale and by rebuilding or redecorating their churches with
fresco and stucco. Whereas mediaeval monasteries were as a
rule built in a jumble to the south of the church, with the
cloister as their only regular element, and the chief buildings of
the common life, the chapter-house and the refectory, as their
most distinguished features, Baroque monasteries had a very
different order of priorities. For them the representational and
hospitable parts of the monasteries—the main stairs, and the
state apartments of the abbot and his guests. culminating In the
Festsaal—were those on which the most attention was to be
lavished, whilst a splendid library symbolized the monasteries’
historic role as repositories of sacred Jearning. For Imperial
Free abbeys, the Festsaa/ was more than just a saloon for great
receptions—it was a Kaisersaal, a room that broadcast their
Status as sovereigns under the emperor. It was therefore
appropriate that the direct models for their new symmetrical
layouts should have been found in secular Sch/ésser, whilst
their ideal inspiration came from the palace-cum-monastery
complex of the Escorial. itself partly inspired by theoretical
reconstructions of Solomon's Temple. Abbeys were still acquir-
ing sovereign status as late as the second half of the eighteenth
century: that this was no hollow presumption is shown by the
fate of Weingarten, whose plans for the reconstruction of its
abbey buildings— the most appealing of all ideal plans— were
thwarted by the abbey’s subjection to the emperor in his
capacity as ruler of Austria. And whilst the scale and decor-
ation of reconstructed monastic buildings asserted the abbeys’
rights as rulers, the decoration of their churches embodied the
special claims to venerability and sanctity of the orders that
built them. In Swabia and Switzerland several of the great
Benedictine abbeys also incorporated a reference to Fischer von
Erlach’s church of the Benedictine University at Salzburg
through their bowed-out facades.
Certain of these Benedictine abbey churches~ Einsiedeln,
Zwiefalten and Weingarten were, exceptionally, themselves
pilgrimage churches. In general the old orders in South Ger-
many, notably the Cistercians and Premonstratensians, though
Bavaria and Swabia 221
eagerly fostering this manifestation of popular piety, avoided
the disruption of the claustral life that pilgrimages brought
with them. Instead, the Cistercians at Neu-Birnau and
Vierzehnheiligen, and the Premonstratensians at Steinhausen
and the Wies, lavished all the resources of architecture and
decoration upon building pilgrimage-churches set in the middle
of the countryside, that nevertheless succeeded in attracting
more than one hundred thousand communicants in a year.
These pilgrimage-places were unlike those of the high middle
ages. which were generally at sites linked with the life of Christ
or with the resting-places of the earliest Apostles and Martyrs;
instead, they sprang from the late-mediaeval and post-Tri-
dentine susceptibility to miraculous vistons and happenings,
associated either with pre-Christian cult sites, or with crude
images reflecting new intensities of devotion to the sufferings of
Christ and the Virgin2° The custodianship of these places and
images was one of the chief assets of the old country-based
orders, as compared with the later urban orders of friars and
286 Obermarchtial, interior of the abbey church designed by Michael
Thumb in 1684, built 1686-92. Stucco by Johann Schmuzer,. 1689-94
=,
tara
AR Leach neon
Ad Se NAS hoe
-
1, “se
congregations. The orders particularly associated with the
Counter-Reformation either cultivated a more verbal appeal.
and relative plainness in their churches — like the Capuchins and
the Carmelites—or, in the case of the Jesuits. developed two
specialized types of ecclesiastical building — galleried wall-pillar
churches to house the largest possible number of auditors
222 Part 1V Central and Eastern Europe
— both their own students and the public ~ for their sermons:
and rudimentary, but lavishly decorated. low rectangular
rooms to house the communal devotions of the congregations
that they fostered amongst their own students and the towns-
folk.
The distinctive asset of Bavarian and Swabian Baroque archi-
tecture in the ecclesiastical field was a kind of structure that was,
in its own way, as significant an invention for this region as that
initiated by Alberti’s S. Andrea and perfected in Vignola’s Gesu
was for Europe as a whole. This is the wall-pillar church: an
aisleless, tunnel-vaulted building, with chapels placed between
internal buttresses that are connected by small transverse
tunnel vaults, springing at the same level as the main vault."
Such churches generally had an insignificant transept or none at
all, a recessed apsidally-ended choir, and galleries running
through the wall-pillars above the chapels. The want of a
clearly-defined crossing, abetted by considerations of economy
and spatial instinct, made domes rare. In many ways, the wall-
pillar church was a synthesis of Late-Gothic and Renaissance
structures—the wall-pillar system of chapels between internal
buttresses that had been extensively developed in Southern
Germany and Austria in the late middle ages, and the Renais-
sance revival of tunnel-vaulting, with galleries inserted to
accommodate the Jesuit (and originally Protestant) accent on
preaching. Appropriately then, it was a Jesuit church, St
Michael’s at Munich (1583-97, designed by Friedrich Sustris
and Wendel Dietrich, executed by Wolfgang Miller) that
initiated this type of church, and further Jesuit churches — at
Dillingen (1610-17, by Hans Alberthal), and on the Schonen-
berg above Ellwangen (1682-86, designed by Michael Thumb
and Heinrich Mayer SJ, executed by Christian Thumb) — that
inaugurated the exploitation of it by the Graubtindeners and
Vorarlbergers respectively.*}
The Graubiindeners and the Vorarlbergers were to Bavaria
and Swabia what the Comasques were to Austria.** The
Graubiindeners who, as we have seen, also extended their
activity into Austria and Salzburg, were more concentrated in
Bavaria, whilst the Vorarlbergers, though stemming from the
westerly part of the Habsburg dominions, flourished in Swabia.
Whereas the Graubiindeners had begun moving into Bavaria
and Swabia in the second decade of the seventeenth century, the
Vorarlbergers emerge as a distinct group only with the found-
ing of the Aver Zunft — the Au Guild and Confraternity— by
Michael Beer in 1657. Although Beer almost immediately
obtained a commission of more than provincial importance,
(the first rebuilding after the Thirty Years War of a major
abbey, at Kempten 1652ff), he was very shortly displaced there
by a Graubiindener, Giovanni Serro, so that the Vorarlbergers’
heyday did not begin until the 1680s, with the Schonenberg
Pilgrimage-Church, and the great abbey churches that fol-
Jowed. The Graubiindeners, like the Comasques, but with less
originality, combined the practice of masonry with stucco-
work, whereas the Vorarlbergers came only late to the latter.
and, as mentioned earlier, relied chiefly on the Wessobrunners
for this essential complement to their architecture. Both the
Graubiindeners and the Vorarlbergers shared the virtues of
mobility and adaptability that favoured them as itinerant
masons against the hidebound guildsmen of the towns, but
whereas the Graubtindeners especially enjoyed the repute of
being, in the words of the chronicler of Zwiefalten, ‘a people
superior to our own in speed and diligence’, the key Vorar!-
bergers were conveniently ready to be the contractors for, as
well as the builders of, the buildings that they undertook.
Certain Graubundeners made contact with court and urban
circles, and correspondingly enlarged the scope and range of
their designs, but the Vorarlbergers remained almost ex-
clusively in monastic employment, and their churches are
almost all developments of the wall-pillar type. At one time it
was even customary to refer to this design as the ‘Vorar/berger
Miinsterschema’, though this categorization is now recognized
as unduly confining. The series starts with the Schénenberg
Pilgrimage-Church (1682-86), receives its classic formulation
in the Premonstratensian Abbey Church of Obermarchtal
(1686-92, designed by Michael Thumb~—here replacing a
Graubiindener), and enjoys a last Jease of life in the early
churches of Peter Thumb (the Benedictine Abbey Church of
Ebersmiinster, ] 719-27, and the Benedictine Abbey Church of
St Peter in the Black Forest, 1724-27). All these churches have
naves of wall-pillar construction, with a somewhat wider bay
marking the centre of a barely projecting transept, usually
followed by a choir with free-standing pillars, contrasting with
the wall-pillars of the nave. Developments within this schema,
and particularly within the oeuvre of the most fertile of the
Vorarlbergers, Franz Beer (whose ‘von Bleichten’ denotes the
title given to him by the emperor in 1722, albeit not for his
architectural activity), include a growing approximation of the
wall-pillars to free-standing pillars, and an increase in the
autonomy given to each bay, through the employment of
saucer-domes or sail-vaults—the Jatter doubtless borrowed
from the Comasques. The employment of such vaults went
hand in hand with the increasing importance given to frescoes
at the expense of stucco, and with increasing illusionism within
the frescoes themselves. Almost all these churches were stuc-
coed by members of the Schmuzer family from Wessobrunn;
and whereas the earliest churches had only richly plastic, but
sparing, acanthus stucco forming the focus of each vaulting-
bay —Irsee (1699-1702) was the first to incorporate a cycle of
paintings— the later churches, notably Weissenau (nave by
Franz Beer, 1717-23) and Weingarten (1715-20), employ acan-
thused ribbon and diaper-work on the peripheries of their
frescoed vaults.
Despite the increasing predilection for domical vaults, Wein-
garten was the only Vorarlberger church to be built with a full
drummed dome over the crossing. It is in some sense the climax
of the series, though neither the last to be built, nor exclusively
attributable to the Vorarlberger architect who provided the
basic plan, but left when he was not entrusted with the total
conduct of its construction— Franz Beer. Drummed domes
were contemplated at other Vorarlberger churches, at Disentis
and Einsiedeln, but in both these cases, as later at Ottobeuren,
the idea was dropped. Drummed domes ran counter to the
South German taste for visual immediacy so that whereas
they are still to be found in churches that antedate the era of
great unifying frescoes — for example, at Kempten, in the Thea-
tine Church of Munich, and in Stift Haug at Wurzburg -— there-
after, if they were employed at all, it was generally not in the
structurally logical place, over the crossing, but over the choir,
where they had the iconological significance of a baldachin (e.g.
at Seedorf, the Parish Church of St James at Innsbruck, and the
Heiligkreuzkirche at Augsburg). This is in contrast to the more
enduring taste for full domes in Austria, where Italian influ-
ences were always stronger. In various other places—at, for
instance, Ottobeuren, Vierzehnheiligen, and Neresheim — the
building of a full dome was considered, and in all three the final
286
287
287
decision went against it. Almost the last full dome to be built
was Neumann’s over the crossing at Munsterschwarzach
(1733).
Weingarten* is a typical and early instance of the synthetic
planning instigated and controlled by the chent that was to be
characteristic of most of the major architectural projects in
South Germany. Even if he intervened in no other way, the
client always had an important say in the final appearance of a
building because he, rather than the architect, chose the
artists—the frescoist, the stuccador, and the altar-builders — to
complete the interiors. At Weingarten, however, Abbot Sebas-
tian Hyller not only obtained alternative plans from several
architects (Franz Beer, J.J. Herkomer and Joseph Schmuzer),
but also employed Andreas Schreck, a Vorarlberger lay-
brother from his own monastery, to ‘Improve’ the plan chosen.
and sought advice on further details— notably the dome,
facade, high altar and galleries—from the Wurttemberg court
architect. Donato Frisoni. One of the latter's most important
contributions was to suggest the concave form of the galleries.
which. with the clustered pilasters and entablature on the front
end of the wall-pillars, and the broad, arched passageways
through them above and below, went as far as was possible in
creating free-standing supports. Light floods in from the sides
of the church through two tiers of paired, broad-arched
windows and Diocletian windows (perhaps suggested by Her-
komer) above, and is reflected through the whole church by the
plain white plaster detailing below, and Franz Schmuzer's
delicate white ribbon-work stucco on a dove-grey ground in the
vaults and on the galleries. In striking contrast 1s the saturated
colouring of the frescoes, the first major cycle by Cosmas
Damian Asam (1719-20). in some of which, whilst apparently
resorting to Pozzoesque illusionism, he was already achieving,
not a prolongation of the spectators space, but an autonomous
world above his head.
One other major Vorarlberger church, which also stands
outside the customary schema, was frescoed by Cosmas
Damian Asam, but this time in collaboration with his brother
Egid Quirin as stuccador. This was the Benedictine Abbey
Church of Einsiedeln, which, exceptionally amongst monastic
churches, was also a pilgrimage-place. combining the two
functions in an Upper and a Lower Minster of differing dates
and construction. An earlier Vorarlberger builder, Hans Georg
Kuen. had already rebuilt the choir of the monks’ part of the
church, the Upper Minster (which was tn turn to be remodelled
after the rest of the church in Rococo taste in 1746), when a
Vorarlberger inmate of the monastery, Brother Caspar Moos-
brugger, was instructed to make plans for the reconstruction
first of the Upper Minster. and then of the Upper and Lower
Minsters together. Nothing came of these plans and in 1702 1t
was decided to rebuild the whole abbey (begun tn 1704). At this
point occurred the decisive intervention by a Bolognese vir-
tuoso, Count Marsigli, who submitted the plans to an unnamed
Milanese ‘pupil of Bernini’s’. Whilst finding no fault with the
monastic layout, which they interestingly confessed was quite
287 Top right Weingarten, interior of the abbey church. Stucco by Franz
Schmuzer, !7t8-2t; frescoes by Cosmas Damian Asam, 1719-20
288 Right Weingarten. facade of the abbey church buill by Franz Beer and
Brother Andreas Schreck, 1715-20, with interventions by Donato Fnsoni,
1717
224 Part IV Central and Eastern Europe
289 Top Einsiedeln, plan of abbey church
290 Above Rohr, interior of the Priory Church of the Assumption built
1717-22, with retable of the Assumption, by Egid Quirin Asam, 1722-23
291 Opposite tngolstadt, interior of the Prayer-Hall of the Marian
Congregation built 1732-36, fresco and stucco by the Asam brothers, 1734
unlike that of Italian monasteries, they made a suggestion
crucial for the church: that both the area round the hermit
Meinrad’s Chapel housing the miraculous Black Virgin and the
monks’ choir should be singled out architecturally from the rest
of the wall-pillar church (whose construction they clearly failed
to understand), the former by creating a dome over it, and
lateral exedrae to facilitate the circulation of the pilgrims, and
the latter by another dome. Moosbrugger made a series of
designs over the next fourteen years elaborating on these
suggestions, and though he abandoned the idea of a dome over
the Chapel in favour of an octagonal vault springing from the
surrounding piers and meeting over an arch-linked pair of
pillars above the Chapel, whilst the Chapter decided against his
full drummed dome over the monks’ choir in 1723, he retained
and developed the idea of the church as a succession of
domically-vaulted areas (built 1719-26). In the event, the
spatial clarity of Moosbrugger’s conception is overlaid, not
merely by the Asam brothers’ vigorously coloured and sculp-
tural frescoes and stucco in the vaults (in which Cosmas
Damian extended his illusionistic devices to include a circular
stepped podium footing for his fresco of the Last Supper, and
an all-round landscape setting for his fresco of the Nativity and
the Annunciation to the Shepherds), but also by the unfortunate
extension of this stucco and stucco-marbling to the unadorned
lower parts at the end of the nineteenth century. Despite this,
Marsigli’s suggestions and Moosbrugger’s church are inter-
esting both as an early instance of the transmission of Milanese
ideas (cf. Ricchino) of combining centrally-planned spaces to
South Germany, and as a probable spur to Moosbrugger’s
experimentation, in drawings that were to influence Dominikus
Zimmermann, with an ambulatoried oval as the focus of a
pilgrimage-church.
Church architecture in Bavaria at this period presented a far
less unified picture than in Swabia. The Italian wife of the
Elector Ferdinand Maria of Bavaria, Henriette Adelaide of
Savoy, unfortunately failed to get Guarini to pass through
Munich on the way to Paris in 1662 to design the great new
Theatine Church that she and her husband built in gratitude for
the birth of a long-awaited son. Instead, the Bolognese architect
Agostino Barelli (1627-79) designed a conventional domed
basilica based on S. Andrea della Valle that remained virtually
without influence in Bavaria. The two major Benedictine
Abbey Churches, Benediktbeuern (1681-86) and Tegernsee
(1684-88), the former by an unknown architect (probably the
Wessobrunner Caspar Feichtmayr), and the latter by the
second-rank Graubiindener Antonio Riva, are less notable for
their architecture than for their frescoes by the Asams’ father —
the first by a native artist since the Thirty Years War.
By the end of the century, however, two Graubtindener
architects were operating in Bavaria, extending the range of
architectural designs more fruitfully than Barelli. These were
Enrico Zuccalli (c. 1642-1724) and Giovanni Antonio Viscardi
(1645-1713).45 The two were lifelong enemies, so that, despite
their approximately equal ages, Viscardi only flourished when
Zuccalli, as the elector’s favourite architect, was eclipsed during
Max Emanuel’s exile and the Austrian occupation. Zuccalli’s
work for Max Emanuel will be dealt with later; his ecclesiastical
activity appears less important than that of Viscardi, either
because his designs remained unrealized (Altotting), or because
they merely clad an existing Gothic church in Baroque forms
(Ettal), or because they were merely for chapels. In the latter,
however, he shows a predilection for oval plans (also employed
a7
a
‘ ~ «fi Se sieaaiiaie
NS Tape es
r 4 4 “th Stet ay AS AS
226 Part IV Central and Eastern Europe
by his cousin Johann Caspar Zuccalli, for the Theatine Church
at Salzburg), often inscribed within a rectangular shell, that
should probably be recognized, along with Moosbrugger’s
studies, as an influence upon Dominikus Zimmermann.
Viscardi's ecclesiastical buildings exhibit greater diversity,
partly occasioned by the widely differing nature of the commis-
sions involved. At Freystadt (1700-10), he rebuilt the pil-
grimage-church for Count Tilly on a Greek-cross plan with an
extended choir and a vestibule, covered by an old-fashioned
ribbed and stuccoed dome with a plinth instead of a drum, and
with awkwardly stilted arches over the galleried chapels in the
diagonals. At Furstenfeld he had a hand in_ planning
(1699/1700), but did not live to see built (1716-28) the Cis-
tercian abbey church as a massive wall-pillar structure. Fin-
292 Aldersbach, vault of the abbey church, with fresco by Cosmas Damian
Asam, 1720, and stucco by E.Q. Asam
ally, in Munich itself he built the plain, rectangular congregat-
ional prayer-hall, the Burgersaal (1709-11), and the votive
church of the Holy Trimity (1711-14). Here he again employed a
Greek-cross plan with an extended choir, but with much greater
suavity than at Freystadt. There are solid chamfered piers with
pendentives above in the diagonals and the dome is wholly
frescoed by C. D. Asam (1714/15). The dome has no drum, so
that Viscardi was able to tuck it away behind the canted-sided
facade. which expresses, whilst concealing, its octagonal casing,
an ingenious adaptation of Ricchino’s S. Giuseppe at Milan.
Viscardi’s Munich Trinity Church and Zuccalli’s church at
993
Ettal are unusual in the Bavarian context for the attention
lavished on their fagades—the serpentine facade of Ettal 1s,
exceptionally. of stone and not plaster and for their use of full
columns. The bases and entablatures of those on the Trinity
Church are angled in keeping with the canted centre. which 1s
crowned by a jagged, broken double pediment with outward-
turning ends. The multiple layering of the entablature and
pediment is not uncommon in the Empire at this period (cf.
Kremsmiinster and Melk, and Ottavio Broggio’s churches in
Bohemia), and, in this exaggerated form, seems to derive from
North Italy (cf. Carlo Emmanuele Lanfranchi’s S. Giuseppe at
Carignano).
As in Austria, the dominance of the Italians in Bavaria was
first challenged by virtuosi with direct experience of Rome and
Italy — Cosmas Damian (1686-1739) and Egid Quirin
(1692-1750) Asam.*° But whereas Fischer von Erlach was in-
stantly taken up by the Viennese court and aristocracy, the
Asam brothers only built churches, though Cosmas Damian
also worked as a fresco-painter in palaces as well —at Schleiss-
heim, Bruchsal. Mannheim and Etthingen. In Bavaria the court
side of the Graubundeners’ activity was taken over by those
with a quite different training gained in Paris, Effner and
Cuvillies. The Asams were sons of the painter Hans Georg
Asam. and they appear to have been sent to Rome on his death
in 1711 by his client the abbot of Tegernsee, to improve their
respective talents as painter and sculptor. But whereas Cosmas
Damian 1s known to have studied under Ghezzi and to have
won a prize at the Academy of St Luke in 1713, and began
accepting fresco commissions immediately after his return in
1714, Egid Quirin came back to serve a regular apprenticeship
under the sculptor Andreas Faistenberger.
The two brothers’ tender for the construction of Furstenfeld-
bruck between 1714 and 1716 shows that they were eager to
collaborate as architects from the first, though they were not
actually able to work together ull 1720, when they built a
sumptuous chapel at Weihenstephan and decorated the church
at Aldersbach. Their close collaboration as decorators enjoins
caution over placing too much weight upon the documented
responsibility of one brother, rather than the the other, for the
design of what they built. ]t must also be remembered that they
enjoyed a very brief vogue as architects. Almost everything that
they designed from scratch was begun by 1720; thereafter came
only Egid Quirin’s own church, and the church of the Ursuline
convent at Straubing, for which Cosmas Damian forwent his
fee in exchange for his daughter's entry into the convent.
Everything else was a work of decoration or interior transform-
ation, for which the brothers were sought after from Bohemia
to Switzerland. There 1s a curious discrepancy between the
interiors that they created in the churches of other architects or
periods and those of their own two major works, Weltenburg
and the Asamkirche in Munich. The former grew out of, and
contributed to, the vernacular tradition; the latter were evoc-
ations of Roman richness and theatricality that had no suc-
cessors in Bavaria.
The most significant novelty introduced to Bavaria by the
Asams was that of frescoes with a curvilinear frame uniting the
major part of the nave vault of longitudinal churches.*? These
used foreshortening and di sotto in su to suggest, not an
extension of constructed space, but narrative episodes enacted
upon a stage above the congregation’s head.**
The first provision for a vault-uniting fresco was made over
the nave of the Augustinian Priory Church of the Assumption
Bavaria and Swabia 227
(1717-22) at Rohr, though ultimately a painted Marian mono-
grammnie was executed inside the gilded and mildly curved frame
instead, doubtless because nothing was to distract attention
from the Assumption group in the apse. Though Egid Quirin Is
described as having built the church, his hand is apparent only
in the architectural detailing. In construction this transeptal
basilica with a shallow domical vault over the crossing would
appear to be a belated realization by the Wessobrunner mason-
stuccador, Joseph Bader, of a plan made for the church by
Antonio Riva in connection with his reconstruction of the
monastery. Save in the vaults and side-chapels, the church 1s
entirely conventional; its remarkable feature is Egid Quirin’s
retable-like construction behind the canons’ stalls, framing a
stucco tableau vivant of the Assumption. Though Bernini 1s
usually quoted as the inspiration for this, what it really repre-
sents is a permanent embodiment of the temporary, illusion-
istic, theatra sacra raised to a new art by Padre Pozzo-a
celebration of the feast-day of the Virgin throughout the
293 Freising. interior of the Cathedral, transformed with fresco and stucco
by the Asam brothers, 1723-24
pr?
f
Bae
310
290
Be fe
7, 68
228 Part IV Central and Eastern Europe
year—an appropriate manifestation of the new spirit of Joyous
triumph that underlay the extraordinary wave of church build-
ing and refurbishing in South Germany at this period.
At the Cistercian Abbey Church of Aldersbach, Cosmas
Damian did execute a fresco spanning three bays of the nave,
representing St Bernard’s vision of the Nativity (1720). Sur-
prisingly for a fresco of this size, however, he employs a bastard
form of illusionistic projection that is convincing only from the
west end of the church, and one which ts, moreover, like a stage-
set, empirically rather than scientifically constructed. He uses
guadratura solely for the balustrade, because it is ina projection
of this that St Bernard sits, and it is he and the stucco putts
supporting a scroll inscribed in Latin with the words “For God
so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son’ that
mediate between the vision of the Nativity and the spectator;
Cosmas Damian thus succeeds in using degrees of illusion to
structure the content of his fresco. Here and at Rohr Egid
Quirin’s plum-coloured stucco, which makes use of the Regence
ribbon-work originally brought into the decoration of the
Wittelsbach palaces by Joseph Effner, introduces a new note of
colour and reintroduces plasticity into the vaults, notably in the
four massive cartouches (at Aldersbach containing stucco
figures of the Evangelists), deployed in a quite new way to
express the forces usually implied in transverse arch-bands.
Egid Quirin’s stucco transcends the work of other stuccadors to
second his brother’s achievement with sculptural elements (like
the Evangelists) beyond ornament and putt, and also continues
below the entablature. In some churches, most notably in the
Premonstratensian Abbey Church of Osterhofen (built by J. M.
Fischer 1726-28: decorated and furnished 1730-35), he was
able not merely to design and sculpt the high altar and side
altars (the stucco-marbling and stucco sculpture of altars was
also the forte of the Wessobrunners), but also to organize the
side chapels in such a way that the altars are put against the
outer walls Italian-fashion as at Rohr. As a result the whole
church — with Cosmas Damian's main fresco again embracing
three bays of the nave (but this time being taken farther down
the vault, and making the innovation of setting four scenes
from the life of St Norbert before ‘mansion’-like structures in
the middle of the continuous architectural setting round each of
the four sides), the rich greens and golds of Egid Quirin’s
stucco, stucco-marbling, and painted diaper-work, and his
altars — appears to be wholly the work of the Asams, who
decorated it, rather than of Fischer, who built it.
On no other church by a contemporary architect did the
Asams so completely set their stamp, because their intervention
was more narrowly confined to the vaults and altars. Only in the
interior transformation of mediaeval churches, notably Freis-
ing Cathedral (1723-24) and the Benedictine Abbey of St
Emmeram at Regensburg (1732-33), were they free to conjure
the ancient fabric away under their plaster and fresco.*? In
Freising the vault of the long Romanesque nave was almost
exclusively given over to Cosmas Damian, who made a rare
excursion into pure quadratura, painting it with simulated
coffering, transverse arches, and frames either containing
feigned quadri riportati, or surrounding fictive openings con-
taining a painted dome over the non-existent crossing, and a
‘Glory of St Corbinian’ over the central bays of the nave — in
which Cosmas Damian was adopting, not merely the illus-
ionistic tricks of Pozzo in S. Ignazio and Baciccio in the Gesu,
but feigning the setting of the latter in paint as well. Cosmas
Damian also painted a series of scenes from the life of St
Corbinian along the walls of the nave (evoking the tapestry
decoration originally intended for the Cathedral’s jubilee),
whilst Egid Quirin stuccoed the aisles and galleries, and created
pilasters in the nave with a stucco-marble revetment like
Régence boiseries (foreshadowing Osterhofen). In St Em-
meram, the ornament of the vault is stuccoed and not painted,
and Cosmas Damian perversely turns the ilusionistic tables by
framing his frescoes on the vault and walls in heavy gilded
frames more appropriate to canvases, whilst indulging in no
more illusionism than a little compromise foreshortening.
Little in any of these churches prepares us for the Asams’
masterpieces, two churches indubitably built and decorated by
them (the Prayer-Hall of the Marian Congregation at Ingol-
stadt of 1734 is too rudimentary to be called architecture, even
if it were certain that it was built by either of the brothers): the
Benedictine Abbey Church of Weltenburg (built and frescoed
by Cosmas Damian 1716-2], but with decoration continuing
long after), and Egid Quirin’s own Church of St John Nepomuk
in Munich (the Asamkirche: 1733-46). Whereas the churches
that they merely decorated are light-filled, predominantly white
and pastel, and sparing in their use of marbling and gilding,
particularly in the lower zones (though Osterhofen is more
sumptuously sombre), these two churches are essentially dark,
as a foil to the dramatic foci of light, mostly from concealed
sources, and aglow with rich marbling and gilding overlaying
the walls, supports, and entablatures. In both, moreover, the
visitor has the sense of being enveloped by static architecture
with defined boundaries, that only gives way to the indefinite in
the zone of the vaults, in complete contrast to the feeling of
open, circulating space conveyed by the generality of South
German churches in the Baroque era.
Weltenburg is not merely exceptional within the oeuvre of the
Asams, it is exceptional for its function—that of an abbey
church. Instead of the massive longitudinal structures with
monks’ choirs beyond the crossing almost as long as the nave,
Weltenburg adopts a lengthwise oval plan more typical of
urban chapels, tucking the monks away behind the organ-
screen at the west end as if they were nuns. Under this is an oval
vestibule (decorated in 1734-36), decked out with confessionals
to produce and symbolize the purity of heart necessary to enter
the House of the Lord, whilst at the east end there is a short
choir with two /oges, and a high altar retable with an arched
opening in the centre, framing a tableau vivant of St George
rescuing the princess from the dragon, silhouetted against a
light-filled and frescoed apse behind. There are arched recesses
for altars in the diagonals, and two large gilt-framed frescoes
with rockwork buses (cf. the facade of the Asam Church) above
the confessionals in the middle of the sides, one showing the
arrival of the Benedictines in America with Columbus, and the
other framing the pulpit with a statue of St Benedict on the
tester. Two lunettes above these provide the only direct lighting,
cutting into the cut-out oval dome, of which the lower part is
shaped like a cove upon a plinth, and decorated with gilded
294 Opposite Ottobeuren, font-reredos designed by J. J. Zeitler and
execuled by J. M. Feichtmayr and Joseph Christian, before 1766
295 Overteaf left Ottobeuren, detait of a side altar by J. M. Feichtmayr
and Joseph Chrishian, by 1766
296 Overleaf right Weltenburg, dome of the abbey church built and
frescoed by Cosmas Damian Asam, 1716-21 (see also plan in plate 428)
428
297
298
296
reliefs of the arch-angels and scenes from the life of St Benedict.
Putti supporting a gilded crown perch on the rim of this (over
which leans a plaster figure of Cosmas Damian), holding it in
readiness for the coronation of the Virgin taking place inside a
domed rotunda in Cosmas Damian’s fresco, which is lit from
concealed windows set back at the hidden foot of the fresco
behind the cove. creating an effect of miraculous suspension.
It is at first hard to see why the abbot of Weltenburg, Maurus
Bachl (1713-43). accepted such an exceptional design from a
young and untried painter. whom he had met as prior of
Ensdorf, where Cosmas Damain had painted his first and
unremarkable frescoes in 1714. At one level it was simply that
he was the prorégé of a sister Benedictine house in Bavaria. and
fresh from study in what was still. for Bavarians, the artistic
capital of the world (in 1720 the Spintual Council was to insist
that church painters were to adhere to the style of the ‘grossen
Maitres der ItaliGner’ and not adopt the vulgar realism of the
Dutch and German masters). This in itself would not have been
sufficient pretext to depart from the norm for monastic chur-
ches. but Weltenburg. though small and remote (apart from its
situation on the Danube) had special ties with the ruling house
of Bavaria. Not only, like so many communities. did it get
financial assistance from the electors to rebuild, but it also
seems to have played some part in Carl Albert's revival in 1727
of the knightly order of St George. the titular of the church. It 1s
true that this revival and the apse fresco celebrating it post-date
the building of the church by some years. but the prominence
given to the chivalric accoutrements of St George in both altar
and nave fresco suggest that the plan had Jong been maturing.
The imagery of the church is a synthesis of these elements
relating to St George with others relating to the Benedictine
order and to the Virgin Immaculate (who reverses the re-
lationship of the princess and the dragon). and in the same way
the church itself combines the sumptuous privacy of a chapel.
with the requirements of an abbey church that has to serve both
monks and people.°°
One of the countries in which Cosmas Damian. at least,
found frequent employment was Bohemia, and it was doubtless
thus that the bachelor Egid Quirin was caught up in the
devotion to a newly fashionable Bohemian martyr. St John
Nepomuk. canonized in 1729.*! Relics of this saint were
granted only to those who promised to build a chapel or church
to house them. and in the year of the canonization Egid Quirin
began to acquire houses in Munich with a view to building a
church. flanked by a house for himself and another for priests.
From 1733. when the foundation-stone of the church was laid,
to 1746. when it was consecrated. all of Egid Quirin’s resources
(with subventions from the elector) and much of his energies
(with help from Cosmas Damian for the frescoes) were devoted
to the church. After completing his brother's frescoes in the
Ursuline Convent Church at Straubing after Cosmas Damian's
death (71739: the facade is a simplified version of that of the
Asam Church). Egid Quirin allowed nothing but the occasional
creation of altars to distract him from his own church. When he
did take up a decorative commission again it was, surprisingly.
to fresco the Jesuit Church at Mannheim. whilst working on
which he died (1750).
297 Opposite Weltenburg, high altar retable by Egid Quirin Asam, 1721
298 Above right Munich, Church of St John Nepomuk by Egid Quinn
Asam, 1733-46
Bavaria and Swabia 233
The ‘artist's (or architect's) house’ 1s a well-defined genre in
architecture; an ‘artist's church’ 1s unique. Like any prince - or,
more precisely. like the prince-bishop of Wurzburg. whose
Court Chapel is exactly contemporaneous with his — what Egid
Quirin did was to create altars on two levels: one for worshippers
coming in from the street. and the other on a Jevel with his own
apartments. visible from his bedroom. and accessible via a
continuous gallery. Above this. as at Weltenburg. he created a
projecting cove, behind which the concealed lighting and the
foot of his brother's fresco in the vault are situated. Again as at
Weltenburg. the focus of the church is (or was, before nine-
teenth-century alterations) a sculpture of the titular saint of the
church silhouetted against the east window behind the upper
altar. Egid Quirin’s stroke of inspiration was, by contrast with
the Wurzburg Court Church. to develop this upper altar as the
main altar of the church, standing its Salomonic columns upon
the gallery, and bringing their entablatures into connection
with the mouldings of the cove. so that the Throne of Grace
(Trinity Group) which they frame is in its turn silhouetted
against the light from the concealed window above and behind
the cove. Entering the long, narrow church, with light filtering
in from above as if (as the rocks framing the portal of the facade
234 Part IV Central and Eastern Europe
299 Ginzburg, nave vault of the parish church built by Dominikus
Zimmermann, 1736-41, stucco by Pontian Steinhauser and fresco by Anton
Enderle, 1741
suggest) he was in some underwater cavern, the eye of the
visitor is drawn irresistibly toward the altar and upwards, with
St John Nepomuk (who was martyred by drowning in the
Moldau) rising up to the sculptural group of the Trinity, and to
his life and apotheosis in Cosmas Damian’s fresco in the vault.
Enveloping the visitor are walls rich with marbling, gilding,
frescoes and sculpture, and given movement by a series of blind
niches below, and by the broken, curvilinear profiles of the
gallery, entablature and cove above. The confessionals in the
small ova] vestibule, and the sculpture and inscriptions above
the confessionals in the church, incite the sinner to repentance,
to enjoy the eternal life promised by the eucharistic symbols and
the angel-herms round the lower altar; and, as if in token of the
humility needed to accompany repentance, an angel-herm in
the vestibule holds a votive picture of the two brothers praying
in their church, painted with deliberate crudity appropriate to
the genre.
The kind of churches that the Asams produced when work-
ing as architects had, as has been said, no successors in Bavaria;
their innovations as decorators, and more particularly Cosmas
Damian’s innovations as a frescoist, found a greater response.
Pupils like Matthéus Giinther and Christian Thomas Scheffler
diffused Cosmas Damian’s stage-like settings, which were also
taken up by the Catholic director of the Augsburg Academy,
Johann George Bergmiiller, and the innumerable fresco-
painters that came under his influence. Such large-scale frescoes
in turn forced a reappraisal of the role of stucco, which was
facilitated by the presence in Augsburg of Wessobrunner
stuccadors like the Feichtmayrs and the Finsterwalders, as
previously described.
Cosmas Damian’s landscape settings were, with Amigon1's at
Schleissheim and Ottobeuren, an important influence upon
Johann Baptist Zimmermann (1680-1758). J.B. Zimmermann
was, both as court stuccador at Munich and as an important
frescoist and stuccador in Bavarian and Swabian churches and
monasteries, the crucial link between the French-influenced
ornamental innovations of Cuvillies in palace interiors, and the
new rocaille- and cartouche-based stucco decoration of chur-
ches.*? Because he came from an earlier generation than the
Feichtmayrs, and as one who in his last years came to practise
primarily as a painter, he was late in adopting wholeheartedly
the new vocabulary, but two of his assistants, Johann Georg
Ubelhér and J.G. Funk, transmitted elements of it to other
troupes of stuccadors, whilst his own brother not only took up
rocaille, but ended by using it in such a way as to dissolve the
boundaries between stucco and architecture.
Dominikus Zimmermann (1685~—1766) was, as a Wesso-
brunner, by training a stuccador.°? He began his career as a
specialist in scagliola antipendia to altars, and he was also a
competent fresco-painter, but after settling in the Upper Bav-
arian town of Landsberg (of which he was to become mayor) in
1716, he became in increasing demand as an architect. His two
most successful works, both pilgrimage-churches, Steinhausen
and the Wies, were built in association with his brother as
decorator, which naturally evokes a parallel with the Asams;
but whereas Egid Quirtn Asam was a sculptor without a
mason’s training, who therefore seems to have been dependent
upon others to assist tn realizing his architectural and de-
corative conceptions (and he signed himself Pildhauer, sculptor,
in the fresco over the nave of the Church of the Holy Ghost at
Munich), Dominikus Zimmermann, as a Wessobrunner, en-
joyed a craft familiarity with both masonry and stucco (and
signed himself ARCHIT. E. STUCKADOR under the organ gallery at
Steinhausen). Moreover, whereas Egid Quirin and his brother
drew their architectural inspiration from Rome, Dominikus
Zimmermann is not known to have ventured beyond South
Germany and Lake Constance in his journeyman years, and
drew upon local and Vorarlberger traditions and experiments
in his work. Other Wessobrunners also graduated from stucco
to architecture, notably Johann and Joseph Schmuzer, but in
none did the one skill remain so firmly rooted in the other as 1n
the case of Dominikus Zimmermann.
Dominitkus Zimmermann’s earliest churches were chiefly for
nuns—for the Ursulines at Landsberg (1720-25) and for the
Dominicans at Médingen (1716-19) and Siessen (1725-29).
These were all aisle-less churches with a recessed chancel, a two-
tiered nuns’ choir at the rear, and wall-pilasters calibrating the
nave. At Siessen, however, Dominikus Zimmermann not only
introduced a succession of domical vaults (doubtless learnt
300
269
301, 302
from Franz Beer, whose Church of the Dominican Nuns at
Worishofen he had stuccoed), but also — as in the parish church
at Buxheim of 1726-27 — Diocletian windows with idiosyncratic
lobes, that were to remain his trademark (the idea of using
Diocletian windows derives from J.J. Herkomer of Fiissen, in
the hands of whose pupil J.G.Fischer—and his pupil
F.X.Klemhans—they were also given lobes).
Siessen was the first sign that Dominikus Zimmermann was
escaping from his conventional beginnings, albeit only in
detailing. It served however as his introduction to the nearby
Premonstratensians—henceforward his particular patrons as
an order—of Schussenried, who 1n 1727 procured from him a
‘neat little design’ for the total reconstruction of their parish-
cum-pilgrimage church at Steinhausen. This contact with the
Premonstratensians of Schussenried was crucial to Zimmer-
manns development. because — possibly in connection with
never-realized plans to reconstruct their own conventual
church — they had acquired a bundle of plans by Caspar Moos-
brugger, in which, taking Serlio as his starting-point, he had
considered the idea of an oval choir with an ambulatory. This
combination of an oval plan with the construction of a Late-
Gothic hall-choir (that 1s, with free-standing pillars, and ambul-
atory vaults springing from the same level as those over the
choir) was realized by Dominikus Zimmermann in the naves of
Steinhausen and the Wies.
Steinhausen is the simpler of the two, with a narrow vestibule
and staircases to the tower at the west end, and a small
transverse oval choir at the east end. Ten pillars faced with
clustered pilasters, with freely-invented capitals and dosserets
above, divide the nave from the ambulatory, which continues
into the choir as a gallery beginning behind two subsidiary
altars placed between the last pair of pillars on either side of the
nave, and doubtless once crossed in front of the first double
altar in the apse. Such double altars, with the mensa and
tabernacle below, and the miracle-working image and altar-
piece above. were, with the necessary ambulatories and galleries
to provide access to or circulation round them without trespass-
ing into the sanctuary, a frequent solution for pilgrimage-
churches. Dominikus placed ten stucco apostles over the pil-
lars, and over these and the arches created 1n stucco a con-
tinuous undulating zone out of volutes, mascarons, garland-
bearing putti, plinths, and vase-supporting balustrades, that
both serves as a base to Johann Baptist’s ‘irrational’ landscape
setting of his fresco glorifying the Virgin, and participates in it.
The stucco repertoire is Johann Baptist’s (though several of its
Bavaria and Swabia 235
300 Below left Steinhausen, plan of the parish-cum-pilgrimage church built
by Dominikus Zimmermann, t728—-33
301 Below Steinhausen, nave vault, with fresco by Johann Baptist
Zimmermann, 1730-31
components ultimately derive from Egid Quirin Asam, as does
the freedom and colouristic vigour with which the architectural
detailing 1s handled), but the way in which the stucco ceases to
be mere infill. and instead becomes a kind of hybrid between the
architecture and the fresco, doing away with the idea of a distinct
frame, betokens a collaboration between the two brothers even
closer than that between the Asams. The church firmly estab-
lished Dominikus Zimmermann’s credit with the Premonstra-
tensians, despite the fact that it had cost over four times the sum
specified by the chapter of Schussenried: for this Abbot St-
robele was held responsible, and was exiled to another mon-
astery in Lorraine after the consecration of the church in 1733.
Dominikus Zimmermann’s next work was the parish church
of Ginzburg, rebuilt after its destruction by fire in 1735 on a
surprisingly ambitious scale, for reasons of both national
prestige and campanilismo: it was an Austrian exclave in
Swabia, so that the emperor made a substantial donation, and
the townsfolk sent collectors of alms tor the church as tar
afield as the South Tyrol. A Poor Clare convent also used the
church. and it appears to have been the original intention of the
magistrature for the nuns to bear much of the cost of the
rebuilding by designing the church for the dual use of convent
and parish. For this reason it has an oval nave, whose three-
quarter detached columns appear to be the relic of some plan
for a galleried ambulatory. and an unusually long, galleried
choir culminating in a double altar: all elements of a
pilgrimage-church, save that here the idea was to provide a
separate altar and means of circulation for the nuns. In the
event, the latter baulked at the expense, and contented them-
selves with a conventional screened-off double gallery. with its
own altar. at the west end of the church, adjoining the convent.
Nonetheless. the long choir, enclosed below but with paired
free-standing pillars forming a gallery above. was retained: in
its combination with an oval nave this contained the germ of the
Wies. Because of the outbreak of the War of the Austrian
Succession (1740—48). it was impossible to collect adequate
funds to decorate the church in a way worthy of its architecture:
Dominikus Zimmermann did not return after 1741, and the
stucco and frescoes were left to indifferent assistants and local
artists.
The last years of Domimkus Zimmermann’s acuve life were
spent on his masterpiece. the s1wnna of all that he had ever built.
the pilgrimage-church of the Wies (1746-54). The origin of the
pilgrimage was a crude image of the Scourged Christ at the
Column. devotion to whom in this form goes back to the
installation of the supposed column at which he was scourged
in S. Prassede at Rome in 1223, and which was given fresh
impetus in Bavaria in the eighteenth century by the visions of
the Blessed Crescenuia of Kaufbeuren. The image was made for
Good Friday processions by the Premonstratensian monks of
Steingaden in 1730. cast out as ‘too affecting’ a few years later.
and finally begged-for and taken in by a pious woman. who
built a little field chapel for it in 1739. Tears seen to be shed by
the image then provoked one of the most rapidly growing yet
enduring pilgrimages in Bavaria. The field chapel at once
became too small. and in 1745 it was decided to build a new
church. Steingaden not being a sovereign abbey. it was ne-
cessarv to procure permission for this both from the bishop of
Augsburg and the elector of Bavaria. The latter was assured
that. should the pilgrimage die down again with the rapidity with
which it had sprung up. Dominikus Zimmermann’s plan pro-
vided for the viability of the choir as a church on its own. No
such thing happened. but despite the pilgrimage’s continuing
popularity the revenues from pilgrims were never enough to
recover the considerable costs of building and decorating the
church, and the abbey was encumbered with the debt until 11
was secularized in 1803. Dominikus became so closely identi-
fied with the church and pilgrimage that the Wies almost
deserves to be called the Zimmermannkirche. on the analogy of
the Asamkirche. Not only did he and his brother build and
decorate the church. but his son married the pious harbourer of
the image, and he himself, having been refused as a corrodian at
302 Opposite Sieinhausen, detail of nave vaull fresco by Johann Baptst
Zimmermann
303 Above right Pilgrimage-church of the Wies. plan. Built by Dominikus
Zimmermann. 1746-54
304 Overleaf left Wies church, pulpit and choir
305 Overleaf right Wurzburg, Residenz, interior of the Court Church by
Neumann with stuccoes by Bossi and frescoes by Byss, 1732-44
Bavaria and Swabia 237
Schussenried. built a hittle house for himself beside the church.
where he died in 1766.
In essence. the Wies is a fusion of the nave of Steinhausen
with the choir of Ginzburg. refined in certain particulars. and
embellished with full rocaille decoration. Where the rather
elongated oval nave of Steinhausen has single pillars evenly
spaced. the Wies (going back for fresh inspiration to Moos-
brugger’s paper experiments) has a broader nave with paired
columns and wider intervals on the main axes. Whereas the
choir of Gtnzburg is walled-in below and has paired. plain
white pillars marking off the gallerv above. the choir of the Wies
has arched openings below. and single blue-marbled columns
above (alluding to the Virgin. as the red-marbled columns of the
high altar refer to Christ and to the column at which he was
scourged). Johann Bapust's fresco over the choir shows angels
holding out the column, the Cross, and the other instruments of
the Passion to intercede with God for humanity: over the nave.
in a remarkable revival of Byzantine imagery. he depicts the
Etimasia—the moment before the Last Judgement and the
ending of tume. with the gates of eternity not vet opened, and the
judgement seat awaiting Christ. who 1s enthroned on a rainbow
amongst the elect. showing his wounds (again an allusion to the
column) in token of the mercy that will temper his judgement.
As at Steinhausen. the architecture again dissolves into stucco
in the vault, but here rocai/le takes the place of all but a few
figurative elements. cartouches play an important role (though
sull employed in a more planar fashion than in churches
stuccoed by the Augsburg Wessobrunners). and holes pierced
through the plaster between the vaults of the aisles and gall-
eries. and over the rocaille volutes taking the place of arches
linking the columns in the choir. wholly banish any sense of
weight and thrust from the architecture. This is partly
because Dominikus Zimmermann 's lath-and-plaster vaults
have anyway reduced load to a minimum, thus also allowing
him to open up the walls with his idiosvncratically outlined
windows to the maximum extent. In these penetrations of the
vaults. vielding views of frescoed scenes behind. there are
curious and unexplained parallels with Vittone’s and others’
churches in Piedmont. As a result of the amount of light
fiooding into it and the number of openings permitting angled
views into whatever 1s beyond. the church is acutely sensitive
to the quality and intensity of light of the different times of
dav and seasons of the year. Even on the gloomiest davs the
sheer whiteness of the walls and supports. and the gilding and
brightly keved colouring of the furnishings and frescoes make
the church radiant. Yet there is always a bass-note established
by the blood-red marbling of the columns of the altars, and
taken up in the main frescoes. bringing the eve and the mind
back to the Scourged Christ at the column framed in the middle
of the double pilgrimage altar. the origin of the whole church.
The churches that Dominikus Zimmermann built were few.
pan re
Vo Pi awe
: oe. ° ‘an
299
309
and Steinhausen and the Wies were too singular. even as
pilgrimage-churches, to have any successors. Nonetheless Zim-
mermann’s churches grew out of, and recognizably belonged
to. the vernacular tradition of South German Baroque archi-
tecture. and in the case of one of them, Gunzburg. contributed
strongly to this tradition in Swabia. The rather anomalous
vaulting of the nave, with its cove-like zone decorated with
cartouches and fragmentary transverse arch-bands, the shallow
arched recesses for the side altars, and the idiosyncratic outlines
of the windows, became the elements out of which Hans Adam
(1716-59) and Joseph Dossenberger (1721-85) created a
charming series of churches— most notably the Fugger votive
church of St Thecla at Welden (1756-58) and the churches at
Scheppach. Another architect who contributed to the verna-
cular vocabulary of church building in Swabia was J.J.Her-
komer’s pupil. Johann Georg Fischer (1673—1747).** Over the
wall-pillar nave of the Schloss Church at Wolfegg (1733-38)
and over the aisle-less nave of the church of the Poor Clare
nuns at Dillingen (1736-40) he created great trough-shaped
vaults, in these churches wholly filled by frescoes, that became a
popular device in Swabia. One of the most appealing
characteristics of South German architecture is the high quality
of the lesser churches dotted about the countryside. In Swabia
especially the plethora of small sovereign authorities and
jurisdictions enabled several local architectural practices to
develop alongside one another, each employing a limited
number of architectural motifs, but with an attention to detail
and an inventiveness within their repertoire that make the
results endlessly delightful.
In Bavaria it was a Wessobrunner stuccador. Joseph Schm-
uzer (1683~1 752). who was most successful in creating a loca]
practice as the architect of parish churches, extending his
competence from stucco to masonry like his father Johann
before him.>> Some of his earliest churches were round Augs-
burg, but it was in South Bavaria that he won most of his
mature commissions, establishing an informal partnership with
the Augsburg-based frescoist from a village nearby to Wesso-
brunn. Matthaus Gunther. Schmuzer’ss development was to-
wards the creation of a succession of centralized and variously
vaulted spaces. as in the parish churches of Mittenwald
1737-40) and. most successfully of all, Oberammergau
(1736-41). In these last two churches Schmuzer can also be seen
tentatively adopting the accentual system of rocaille cartouche
stucco evolved at Diessen, and indeed the new developments in
stucco seem to have given a fresh impetus to the end of his
career. Oberammergau belonged to the Austin Priory of
Rottenbuch, by whose Prior Schmuzer was also em-
ployed as a mason and stuccador utterly to transform the
interior of the mediaeval Priory Church with rampant pink
rocaille stucco and Matthaus Gunther's frescoes (1737-45). It
was whilst stuccoing the interior of another monastery church.
part mediaeval and part Zuccalli, that of the Benedictine Abbey
of Ettal (1745-52), that he died.
Two Vorarlbergers, Peter Thumb (1691-—1766)°° and Johann
Michael Beer von Bleichten (1 700-67), continued to uphold the
building traditions of their people beyond the middle of the
century. The latter probably made a decisive intervention in the
306 Opposite Vierzehnheiligen, pilgrimage-church by Neumann, begun
1742, pilgrimage altar by Kiichel, 1762
Bavaria and Swabia 241
307 Neu-Birnau, exterior of the pilgrimage-church built by Peter Thumb,
1746-51
involved planning of the Benedictine Abbey Church of St
Gallen (1749). Peter Thumb’s earlier churches (already men-
tioned page 222) were backward examples of the wall-pillar
type for their time. but later in his career he built a series of
churches with aisle-less naves and recessed choirs. That upon
which his fame rests. the pilgrimage-church of Neu-Birnau
(1746-51). owes much, but by no means everything to its
exquisite decoration by the frescoist G.B.Goz and the stucc-
ador Joseph Anton Feichtmayr, within a range of green,
vellow and ochre colours probably laid down by the former.
Yet the undulating gallery with its vaulted underside running
round the whole church. and the centralized nave vault en-
livened by triangular penetrations all round, link this with
Thumb’s other masterpiece. the Library of the Benedictine
Abbey of St Peter in the Black Forest (1739-53), and show that
he had a fine sense of the modulation of simple spaces.
The one church architect in Bavaria and Swabia, apart from
the Asams and Dominikus Zimmermann, to achieve more than
provincial stature was Johann Michael Fischer (1692-1 766).*”
Unlike these, he was the son of a mason and trained in the craft
tradition, going as far afield as Moravia during his journey-
man years — an experience which his earliest churches
reflect. Although he then came to Munich as the foreman
of the city mason Johann Mayr, acquired citizenship in 1723,
and married Mayr’s daughter in 1725, the posts of city and
court mason at Munich were preempted by Mayr’s stepsons
from Miesbach, Johann (1692-1763) and Ignaz Anton
(1698-1764) Gunezrhainer. The only significant commission
that he obtained at Munich was, therefore, early on in his
career, to build the Hieronymite Church of St Anna am Lehel.
His chief employment, as his tomb proudly declares, was as a
monastic architect— working both for the great sovereign ab-
beys of Swabia and for the more modest religious houses under
the jurisdiction of the elector of Bavaria (involving a difference
of scale which must always be borne in mind). He also built
parish churches, but never, surprisingly, a ‘pure’ pilgrimage-
church (as the churches of Our Lady of the Rubble at Ingolstadt
and Our Lady of the Snows at Aufhausen were built as much
with the Austin Friars and Oratorians that served them as with
their pilgrimages in mind). Not only was he called in with
unusual frequency to build and partially redesign churches
begun by other hands or incorporating older fabric, but he also
suffered from interference with his designs during execution
and after his death. Like all builder-architects, he had to
renounce the responsibility for his churches after completing
the vaults, leaving them to the hands of the frescoists and
stuccadors, but in his case the problems of adaptability that this
posed must have been all the greater in that his career spanned a
period of extraordinary mutability in ornamental vocabulary,
from the heyday of ribbon-work to not only the birth, but also
the final phase of rocai/le, so that he was called upon to provide
the architectural matrix for decorators as different as the Asams
and the Feichtmayrs. In some ways his most considerable
achievement was, from Diessen to Rott am Inn, to evolve an
architecture to whose chasteness and lucidity rocaille car-
touche stucco was the perfect foil. There is no sense in asking
whether and how Fischer was a Rococo architect, because the
architectural criteria that are used to decide this question bear
no necessary relation to the characteristics of the ornament
from which the idea of a Rococo ‘style’ comes; what one can say
is that Fischer created churches—and this can be judged by
comparing them with those Rococo churches that are merely
recladdings of earlier fabrics, or re-eemployments of traditional
building types like the wall-pillar church—that are perfect
vehicles for Rococo decoration: not only for rocaille stucco, but
for Rococo frescoes and furnishings as well. Rott am Inn 1s the
supreme example of that much abused word, the
Gesamtkunstwerk — the total work of art — produced not by a
fortuitous concatenation of structure, decoration and furnish-
ing from different decades, but by architect, artists, and crafts-
men all working together in conscious sympathy with and
adaptation to one another's contributions. The Asams and the
Zimmermanns created Gesamtkunstwerke as brothers working
in unison designing virtually the totality of their churches; Rott
am Inn is a Gesamtkunstwerk produced by wholly independent
artists working in the assurance of a common idiom at its
moment of perfection.
For the reasons mentioned above -—the diversity of commis-
sions, the changes in decorative idiom, and the number of
occasions on which Fischer was faced with completing someone
else's work —it is misleading to divide up his work too neatly
Bavaria and Swabia 243
308 Opposite Wies church, nave. Stucco by Dominikus Zimmermann and
fresco by Johann Baptist Zimmerman
309 Above Roltenbuch, interior of the priory church, transformed and
stuccoed by Joseph Schmuzer, with frescoes by Matthaus Gunther,
1737-45
into periods or categories, or to speak too glibly of the con-
stants in his work. Nonetheless, his buildings do group them-
selves to a certain extent. and within his work there is a
tendency towards the creation of churches out of communic-
ating yet ever more clearly defined spaces. His first two signific-
ant churches, Osterhofen (1726-28) and St Anna am Lehel
(1727-29), are both somewhat ill-defined spatially, and in both
the dominant element is the Asams’ decoration. There followed
a church ~ Diessen (1732-34) — in which the roeaille cartouche
method of stucco decoration was first deployed by the Feicht-
mayr troupe. Then came a group of three churches, Berg am
Laim (designed 1735, executed and decorated 1735-44), Auf-
hausen (designed 1735, executed and decorated 1746-51), and
Ingolstadt (1736-40), in which Fischer played variations upon a
dominant centrally planned nave, covered by a domical vault.
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with saucer-domed spaces attached. After this, he was called
upon to execute the two most grandiose works of his career, the
Imperial Free Abbey Churches of Zwiefalten (1741-47) and
Ottobeuren (1748-54), together with the Cistercian Abbey
Church of Fiirstenzell (1740-—48)-—1n all of which he was under
the constraint of beginnings made by other hands. Lastly came
two churches, Rott am Inn (1759-60) and Altomunster
(1736-66), that took the centrally planned designs of his middle
years, using them as the core of more elongated designs
appropriate to conventual churches.
St Anna am Lehel and Osterhofen have already been
partially discussed in the context of the Asams. Of the two
churches, it was upon the Premonstratensian Abbey Church of
Osterhofen that they set their mark more pronouncedly — with
such lavishness that the abbey’s continued indebtedness led to
its suppression fifty years later. As far as Fischer is concerned,
its chief interest lies in the residual Bohemian/Moravian ele-
ments: the convex balconies supported on three-dimensiona!
arches, the three-dimensional arches eating into the tunnel
vault of the nave from the ovoid spaces above the chapels, and
the concave entablatures of the wall-pillars and corners of the
nave. These entablatures make it appear that Fischer reckoned
from the first with an almost wholly frescoed vault, ruling out
any possibility of continuing his three-dimensional arches into
the vault. So whereas in Bohemia the subsequent taste for
frescoes obliterated and made nonsense of several of the
Dientzenhofers’ subtle vaults, Fischer, being confronted with
this taste at the outset, Jet his architecture take a different
course.
For the small community of Hieronymite Friars in Munich,
Fischer created in St Anna a church composed of a transverse
vestibule, succeeded by an ovoid nave created out of two
intersecting circles, and terminated by a three-quarters-round
choir. Unusually. even when employing this fashionably ovoid
nave, Fischer persisted in the use of wall-pillars, with curved
recesses housing the allars between. The composite geometry of
the plan of the nave still has something of the Bohemian
Guarinian tradition in it, but the elevations run counter to this,
and the creation of ancillary spaces in the flanks of the church is
foreign to the Bohemian treatment of walls as a negative, skin-
like feature behind the main element-—the baldachin-like sys-
tem of supports. The vault overhead, sustained by arches of
varying shape and radius, is equally empirical, and merely
serves as the matrix for Cosmas Damian Asam’s fresco in its
restlessly curvilinear frame.
At Osterhofen Fischer had been constrained by the retention
of the stumps of the Romanesque towers and the Gothic choir:
310 Left Osterhofen, interior of the abbey church built by Johann Michael
Fischer, 1726-28; stucco, frescoes, and allars by the Asam brothers,
1730-35
3)1 Below Munich, interior of the parish church of St Anna am Lehe! built
by J. M. Fischer, 1727-29; stucco, frescoes, and altars by the Asam
brothers, 1729-39 (photograph taken before partial destruction by bombing
in (944)
312 Opposite Diessen, interior of the priory church built by J. M. Fischer,
1732-34: stucco by the Feichtmayr troupe; frescoes by J. G. Bergmuller
(nave fresco 1736); consecrated in 1739
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313 Above Berg am Laim (Munich), interior of the confraternity church
built by J. M. Fischer, 1735—44; stucco and frescoes by J. B. Zimmermann,
1743-44
at the Austin Priory Church of Diessen he was called in by an
energetic prior, Herkulan Karg (1728-55), to raise an entirely
new church over foundations laid by a local builder a decade
before. Most significant for this church was that the prior made
two journeys, one with Fischer the year before the church was
begun in 1731] to inspect Fischer's own churches in Lower
Bavaria (1.e. notably Osterhofen), and the other in 1733, when
the carcase of the church must have been approaching com-
pletion, as far as the South Tyrol, to gather ideas for its
decoration. The result of this second trip was that he rejected
any idea that he might have had of employing the Asams, and
instead decided upon a combination — that he must have come
upon both at the Cistercian Abbey Church of Stams near
Innsbruck and at the chapel of the Teutonic Knights at Sterzing
in the South Tyrol-—of Augsburg frescoists and stuccadors. At
these two churches the latter, in the person of the Augsburg-
based Wessobrunner Franz Xaver Feichtmayr, had taken the
first steps towards evolving a form of decoration based prim-
arily upon the cartouche, used both as a frame and a clamp, for
accent and emphasis. At Diessen, Franz Xaver and his brother
Johann Michael Feichtmayr (who had themselves already
made tentative use of asymmetry) came together with another
Wessobrunner, Johann Georg Ubelhér, who had been working
under Johann Baptist Zimmermann on the Reiche Zimmer of
the Munich Residenz, where the first use of the rocaille is to be
found. There French influences and the native repertoire of
ornament converged, and the same is true is Diessen, where
rocaille cartouche stucco was being employed from 1734
onwards — the very years in which the suites of engraved rocaille
ornament by Meissonnier, Lajoue and Mondon were being
published (and, soon after, pirated by the Augsburg engravers).
The novelty of Diessen was the employment of this on a
monumental scale, as framing cartouches in the pendentives of
the saucer-dome over the choir, and as cartouche-clamps
fastened on to the crown of arches, windows, and other nodal
points. Other recaille ornament is sparingly employed at focal
points round the edges and in the centre of blank spaces, on the
same principle as in boiseries. The result of all this, despite the
common use of a wall-pillar nave united by a single fresco
overhead (doubtless at the behest of the prior after seeing the
Asam fresco at Osterhofen, for this was the first of the kind that
J.G. Bergmuller painted), is very different from that at Oster-
hofen. There the decoration 1s richly coloured, extending evenly
over every surface, both of the walls and the vault, and the
chapels are decorated in their own right; the total impression is
one 1n which architecture and decoration are fused. At Diessen
the effect 1s the opposite: fresco, stucco, furnishings and
architecture all stand out from one another; there are no longer
chapels, but richly gilded altars placed in an old-fashioned way
against the western faces of the wall-pillars — like the wings of a
theatre—leading to a focus tn the high altar. Yet the common
employment of gilding and rocai//e link together furnishings,
framed frescoes, and stucco against the white of the archi-
tecture, whose plainness is deliberately retained in the lower
zone, in contrast to the teeming vault — which is where the
314 Above Ingolstadt, plan of the Austin (later Franciscan) friary church
built by J. M. Fischer, 1736—40 (destroyed in the War)
focus of Rococo churches was henceforward to be. It was also
at Diessen that Fischer introduced what was to be the habitual
scheme of his facades: a giant Order (usually of pilasters)
below, ona high base, supporting a straight entablature on
either side of a bottom-broken pediment above the portal;
above this a freely designed gable with a central niche.
The paths of Fischer and the Feichtmayr-Ubelhér troupe
diverged for the decade after Diessen, and whereas the latter
went on to diffuse the new mode of rocai/le cartouche decor-
ation as far afield as Upper Austria (Wilhering, 1740-51) and
Franconia (Munsterschwarzach, 1737-49, and Amorbach,
1744-51), Fischer found himself working in Bavarta with
stuccadors under the guidance or influence of J. B. Zimmier-
mann. Though largely responsible for introducing rocaille into
stucco, he had become more used to working as a stuccador on
court commissions and was thus slow to perceive the signific-
ance of the use of monumental cartouches in church decor-
ation. Because of his ambitions as a frescotst, however, he did
310
314
adopt something of the more sparing, concentrated deploy-
ment of stucco ornament.
J. B. Zimmermann was the frescoist and stuccador in two of
Fischer's three centrally planned churches of the mid 1730s to
the early 1740s—the Confraternity Church of the Order of St
Michael at Berg am Laim, outside Munich. and the Pilgrimage-
cum-Austin Friary Church of Our Lady of the Rubble (an
image of the Virgin supposedly rescued from profanation by
the Jews) at Ingolstadt. At Berg am Laim a plan of Fischer's
published in 1735, which envisaged joining an octagonal nave
onto a horseshoe-shaped chapel. was reluctantly chosen for
execution in 1737 by the nephew and successor of the founder of
the order, both as grand master and as archbishop of Cologne,
Clemens August von Wittelsbach. Local interests however
pushed forward the Munich city mason. Philip Koglsberger, as
executant. who made his own alterations to and enlargements
of the plan, including preparations for a much more expensive
solid stone vault. This led to his discharge in 1739, and to the
reinstatement of Fischer. who had to take over both his
predecessor's foundations and the twenty-six-foot high trunk
of his facade. In its final form the church emerged as a
succession of spaces tapering—after the transverse oval vesti-
bule — towards the choir, in which it is not unlike Rainaldi’s
S. Maria in Campitelli at Rome, save that the vaults assert the
spatial separation of the parts more strongly. Curved walls in
the diagonals, a saucer-dome raised over stilted arches above
the arms, and curious circular-ceiled vaulting penetrations
above the windows in the diagonals, erode any indication of the
nave’s octagonal plan. and in the choir there is a similar
discrepancy between plan and elevation, and absence of clear
spatial] definition. The focus of the church hes in the succession
of J. B. Zimmermann’s landscape-set frescoes recounting the
discovery and miracles of the Grotto of St Michael at Monte
S. Angelo (1743-44), whose dominant colour 1s picked up by
the apple-green marbling of the columns and entablature.
At the Pilgrimage-cum-Oratorian Church of Our Lady of the
Snows at Aufhausen (both frescoist and stuccador unknown)
Fischer again assembled the church out of a succession of
centrally-planned spaces-— vestibule, nave and choir— but with
a more conventional elevation in the nave. where there are
saucer-domed chapels, with saucer-domed galleries above, in
the diagonals. This is a reversion to Viscardi’s treatment of
Freystadt, albeit with more refinement in the details —including
a low domical vault above an undulating cornice in the nave,
containing a single fresco (only in the choir are pendentive
cartouches employed). and brightly illuminated side-chapels.
The Pilgrimage-cum-Austin Friary Church at Ingolstadt (fres-
coed and stuccoed by J. B. Zimmermann 1739/40, destroyed
1944), whilst dispensing with a vestibule. refined yet further
upon this plan. Here the diagonal chapels were not merely oval
in their vaults but oval in plan, whilst filled with light both
below and in the galleries above. Ingolstadt must have been the
most perfect of the three centrally planned churches of Fischer's
middle years, in which the fluid treatment of space resulting
from the juxtaposition of independently lit and vaulted spaces
was realized in the side-chapels as well. and its loss is the more
regrettable; not until two decades later was Fischer again given
a free hand to experiment further in the same vein, at Rott am
Inn.
One substantial and two major commissions intervened, in
all of which Fischer advised on and modified already begun
buildings. At the Cistercian Abbey Church of Furstenzell
Bavaria and Swabia 247
315 Zwiefalten, interior of the abbey church built by J. M. Fischer,
(741-47
Fischer was asked in 1740 to replace a sculptor. J. M. Gotz,
who had attempted to pose as an architect without the requisite
technical knowledge. After making fresh designs. Fischer direc-
ted the building from a distance, whilst his site manager. though
tearing down the earlier masonry. does not seem to have altered
the foundations—hence the somewhat rudimentary con-
struction of the church, with tunnel-vaults to both the nave and
chancel. whose appearance has been further diminished by the
destruction of the original monks’ choir behind J. B. Straub’s
high altar, and the moving of the latter to the rear wall. The
chief interest of the church lies in its decoration, in which the
abbot played a leading role. He had already obtained the
services of a good local stuccador. but one who had never
worked on this scale. Johann Baptist Modler (1697-1774). and
wanted an Austrian frescoist~ Troger or Altomonte. Fischer,
however (and it is an interesting indication that he had yet to
perceive the significance of the decoration of Diessen) wanted
J. B. Zimmermann, on the grounds that he could give direc-
tions to Modler as well. The troubles of the War of the Austrian
248 Part 1V Central and Eastern Europe
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again mm 1744, the abbot had his way to the extent that he
obtained Troger’s pupil J. J. Zeiller to fresco the church,
whilst Fischer procured a former assistant of J. B. Zimmer-
mann, J. G. Funk, to assist Modler with the stucco, notably
with the cartouches— of whose importance Fischer was now
fully aware—which Modler ruined twice. The difference in
treatment between the choir (stuccoed by Modler in 1741) and
the nave (chiefly stuccoed by Funk 1747-48) reveals the signific-
ant mtegrating effect of rocai/le cartouches between archi-
tecture and fresco, even though, having been executed by one
who was not a member of the Feichtmayr troupe, they are still
somewhat planar, and lacking in balance within their asym-
metry.
One year after he was called in to redress the situation at
Furstenzell, Fischer was summoned to advise on, and in the
event to redesign, the church of the Benedictine Abbey of
Zwiefalten. This church, the first of the two monumental
buildings of Fischer’s career, was built in affirmation of the
status that the abbey aspired to, and which it obtained in
}750—that of Reichsfreiheit. Only this can explain the decision
not merely to extend the choir by thirty feet instead of the
origmally intended seven and to build a new ashlar facade, but
also to construct proper stone vaults, rather than the lath-and-
plaster ones usual in South Germany. It was the construction of
these vaults, which was beyond the competence of the local
masons (called Schneider) who had begun to rebuild the
church in 1739, that led to Fischer’s employment. Though he
advised demolishing everything but the towers hugging the west
end of the narrowed choir, it would seem that he was either
constrained by the retention of portions of the mediaeval
foundations, or by the local prestige of the Vorarlberger
tradition, and of the reichsfrei Weingarten in particular, into
adopting—as at Diessen and Furstenzell—a wall-pillar plan for
the nave. Moreover, instead of the varied succession of cent-
rally planned spaces found in his churches of the previous
decade, Fischer alternates tunnel-vaults over the nave and choir
with saucer-domes over the crossing and sanctuary. It 1s likely
that tradition and prestige also required his incorporation of a
somewhat inorganic transept, though by this period—in con-
trast to Weingarten — it was thought preferable to have a clearly
frescoed saucer-dome rather than a full dome with a drum over
the crossing.
The really successful elements of the church derive from the
combined decorative talents of Fischer himself (mitigating the
severity of the wall-pillar schema with convex galleries and
stucco-marble columns), the fresco-painter F.J.Spiegler
(1691-1757). the sculptor J.J. Christian (1706-77) and the
stuccador J.M. Feichtmayr. Though nothing ts said of Spiegler
being accorded the overall control enjoyed by Zeiller at Otto-
beuren, this was probably the case; it 1s suggested by the
striking colouristic harmony of the church— notably between
his frescoes and the rich golden capitals and reddish-brown
shafts of the paired columns placed on the front face of the wall-
pillars, and between these and the stucco-marble altars— and by
the complex design of the pulpit and counter-pulpit (together
forming an interlocking tableau of the Vision of Ezekiel and the
316 Left Zwiefalten, vault of the nave; stucco by J. M. Feichtmayr and
fresco by F. J. Spiegler, 1751
317 Below Ottobeuren, plan of the abbey church built by J. M. Fischer,
1748-54
318 Opposite Ottobeuren, inlerior; stucco by J. M. Feichtmayr and frescoes
by J. J. and F. A. Zeiller, 1754-64
3/5
250 Part 1V Central and Eastern Europe
319 Ottobeuren, choir stalls and organ; jomery by Martin Hormann and
sculpture by Joseph Christian, 1755—64
Way of Redemption). Spiegler’s own main fresco over the nave
is a remarkable vertical composition showing an involved chain
of salvation extending from the Trinity via the Virgin, and
diffused through her images in the main Marian pilgrimage-
places served by the Benedictines. This fresco, like those at
Osterhofen and Diessen, extends over all four bays of the nave,
but its frame is entirely dissolved into C- and S-shaped sections,
with eruptions of rocaille stucco at the junctions and over into
the fresco, which, correspondingly, has a discontinuous setting,
sharply receding and advancing in curved strips of wall and
steps: nowhere ts the close symbiosis of developments 1n stucco
with those in fresco better exemplified.
The church at Zwiefalten led to his commission to take over
the church at Ottobeuren,** another great Swabian Benedictine
abbey, which had achieved Reichsfreiheit in 1711, but whose
dynamic abbot, Rupert Ness (the son of a blacksmith from
Wangen), preferred to rebuild the abbey buildings on a palatial
scale before wounding the more conservative monks’ sensibil-
ities by rebuilding the church, which was designed from the first
to jut out In continuation of the central spine of the abbey. The
pronounced transept, and the convex facade between two
towers, clearly alluding to the Benedictine University Church at
Salzburg, are also features of the church as built that go back to
the earliest designs for the reconstruction of church and mon-
astery by an inmate, Father Christoph Vogt (c. 1711). Between
this date and the laying of the foundation-stone of the church in
1737 Abbot Ness, in the characteristically autocratic way of
German clients in the Baroque era, procured a series of plans
from almost every architect working in Swabia, including
Dominikus Zimmermann, Joseph Schmuzer, and the Com-
asque stuccador of the abbey, Andrea Main, before taking
aside his local mason, Simpert Kramer, indicating the features
that he wanted selected from each design, and telling him to
combine them in a workable plan. It is not a little surprising
that, after receiving such interesting projects as Zimmermann’s
for either a pure rotunda or a longitudinal building with an
ambulatoried oval crossing, and Maini’s unexpected adapta-
tions of S. Carlino and S. Ivo (but then he and Borromini
shared a common Comasque homeland), the final plan should
have been so archaic. Not only on account of the apsidally
ended transepts and choir, which are reminiscent of Salzburg
Cathedral (itself retrospective), but also on account of the low
aisles, whose lean-to roofs on the exterior look quite mediaeval.
A full dome over the crossing was considered after the church
was begun, but rejected in favour of a calotte. Ness’s successor
as abbot had doubts about the design, and called in for
consultation the echpsed Munich court architect Joseph Effner,
who straightened every wall that he could, created a saucer-
dome over the now straight-ended sanctuary, and placed four
massive columns against the fagade. Kramer's inadequacy must
however have become patent, and in 1748 Fischer was finally
invited to produce revised designs, replacing him the next year
when the church had already begun to rise out of the ground.
Fischer’s most successful intervention was in the crossing,
where he enlarged and curved the piers, and flanked them with
attached columns, in such a way that they advance the crossing
into the arms (abetted by steps mounting into the transepts and
chancel) so that it dominates the church. He vaulted the
crossing with a calotte and created a domed double bay on
either side of it, respectively continued by an apsidal ending to
the west and a vaulted sanctuary to the east. In the nave the twin
arched openings in the double bay house chapels, with altars set
away from their eastern walls to allow passage between them; in
the choir they are closed behind J.J.Christian’s »ouvementeé
choir-stalls-cum-organ-case below, but open to the vaults of the
sacristy and vestry respectively above.
Fischer can thus only be accounted as an ‘improver’ of the
plan and elevations at Ottobeuren, albeit a successful one,
whilst his responsibility for its decoration 1s demonstrably less.
Surviving drawings show that his elevations were handed to
competing stuccadors to sketch out their projected ornament
upon, while we know that the chief fresco-painter, J.J. Zeiller,
was entrusted with the design of both the pulpit and font-
reredos, and of the paving of the crossing and choir. The Zeiller
cousins as frescoists apart, the decorative team was the same as
at Zweilalten, with J.J. Christian as sculptor and J.M. Feicht-
mayr as stuccador. The stucco is more selectively employed here
than there; it is at its most striking in the massive cartouches on
the pendentives, though arguably, as one of the competing
stuccadors realized, the scale is too great for them. Christian
253
245
317
319
294
at ee at a pe ee
320
and Feichtmayr were again responsible for the sculpture and
stucco-marbling respectively of the altars and columns, vitally
contributing to the overall effect; and here the pulpit and facing
font-reredos celebrate, the one the Transfiguration, and the
other the Baptism of Christ.
In 1753, on Neumann’s death, Fischer applied to take over
the construction of the church at Neresheim. His appli-
cation —it is fascinating to speculate upon the way in which he
might have modified Neumann’s plans~— was rejected, and he
reverted from the monumental churches of Swabian reichsfreie
abbeys to the more modest scale of churches in Bavaria. Yet it
was with one of these that he achieved the most perfectly
realized church of his career — that of the Benedictine Abbey of
Rott am Inn. It was originally intended merely to transform the
interior of this church with plaster and fresco as was done so
often at this period, but the old fabric was voted unsafe, and in
1759 Fischer was entrusted with the task of rebuilding the
church altogether, incorporating nothing but the two east
towers from the old. Left thus with an almost free hand, Fischer
reverted to his centralized plan with extensions, as in the mid-
1730s: Rott is rather like a cross between the naves of Auf-
hausen and Ingolstadt, fitted between two domically-vaulted
bays the width of the axial openings to east and west, with a
concealed sacristy behind the high altar one end, and a hori-
zontally divided bay, containing the tomb of the founders
below and an organ gallery above. the other end. The effect,
however, is much chaster, because at Rott all curvature has
been eliminated from piers, entablatures, and balconies: the
frescoes rise behind unbroken circular, or all but circular,
cornices, and the stucco is pared back to a minimal system of
accentual grey cartouches with pink putti, standing out against
the white and yellow fields of the architecture. This exquisitely
composed stucco is the work of F.X.Feichtmayr and his
assistant Jakob Rauch. whilst the frescoes (drawing heavily on
a bozzetto left by the prematurely deceased J.E. Holzer for the
glory of the Benedictine order in the central calotte) are by the
accomplished Augsburg-trained Bavarian Matthaus Gunther.
A namesake, but no relative, Ignaz Giinther, designed and
carved the elegantly mannered painted wooden (instead of the
usual marmoreal white stucco) figures of the altars, with the aid
of his pupil Joseph Gotsch. The remarkable stylistic unity of the
church is partly to be accounted for by the fact that it was
vaulted within the extraordinarily short space of a year, stuc-
coed and frescoed in another four, and furnished by 1767. It is
also interesting that in this particular case Fischer acted as the
overall] contractor as well as the architect. All this was achieved
through cheap loans, and Jed to not unjustified criticism of the
abbot for his precipitancy, for the abbey was unable to proceed
to the reconstruction of its conventual buildings, and was still
heavily encumbered with debt when secularized in 1803.
The last church that Fischer designed and supervised, and the
last major Rococo church in Bavaria, was that for the Brigittine
community at Altomtnster (1763-66). Here again he opted for
a centrally planned nave with extensions, but his design had to
accommodate itself to a series of local peculiarities. On the one
hand it had to retain the two-tiered Gothic choir at one end, and
a Romanesque tower housing steps mounting up to the level of
the church at the other: on the other hand it had to provide for
the quadripartite constitution of the Brigittine com-
munity—nuns, monks, lay-brothers and parish congre-
gation — and for the separate. and sometimes concealed, circu-
lation of all these to their respective portions of the church. The
Bavania and Swabia 251
320 Top Rott am Inn, interior; stucco by F. X. Feichtmayr and Jakob
Rauch, frescoes by Matthaus Gunther, 1760-63
321 Above Rott am Inn, plan of the abbey church buill by J. M. Fischer,
1759-60
252 Part 1V Central and Eastern Europe
eo
322 Rott am Inn, apostle-light sconces, incorporating symbols of Sainis
Simon and Bartholomew
upper part of the east end housed the monks’ choir, with its own
altars, screened off by the parish altar below, and three altars
for the contemplation of the nuns above. The nuns’ choir was
placed over the lay brothers’ choir, looking into, but screened
off from, the choir with the altars on one side, and the nave on
the other. The congregation sat in the saucer-domed octagonal
nave, which is surrounded by passages below, by screened-off
galleries for monks on five sides half way up the pillars, and by a
screened-off gallery all the way round above the entablature for
the nuns. Thus, though the interior plan is similar to that of
Rott, the outer envelope of passages and galleries creates more
solid elevations, through which the light filters at one remove.
and which express the octagon more clearly than ever before.
The (typically late Rococo) apple-green stucco by Rauch is as
sparingly applied as at Rott, but the Tyrolean Joseph Magges’s
fresco over the nave has the more sombre colouring and
synthetic composition that betoken the first chill draughts of
Neo-Classicism. In another major church in Swabia for which
Fischer supplied designs—those for the reichsfrei Benedictine
Abbey of Wiblingen (c. 1757)—which were only executed in
starkly modified form by J.G. Specht after his death (1772-83),
Neo-Classical influences gained the upper hand; it is significant
that when it came to the decoration of the vaults Specht was
discharged (1778), and the frescoist Januarius Zick given
overall control. For in South German churches it was in
painting that the first intimations of Neo-Classicism’s de-
thronement of the Baroque came from Rome: preceding the
French architects and French engravings that introduced the
new modes of architecture and ornament from France.
Bohemia and Franconia
Though Bohemia and Franconia were two very different politi-
cal entities — Bohemia being one of the dynastic kingdoms of the
Habsburgs, and Franconia less an entity than, like Swabia. a
congeries of diverse sovereignties—the architecture of the one
was intimately connected with that of the other. This con-
nection had two main causes. One was that both looked to
Austria for inspiration~ Bohemia because it was ruled by a
Catholic aristocracy largely implanted by the Habsburgs after
the Battle of the White Mountain, and Franconia because its
dominant rulers saw in a strong imperial authority the best
hope for the lesser constituents of the Empire (such as them-
selves) and therefore oriented themselves by Vienna. The other
was that members ofa fertile architectural family, the Dientzen-
hofers, emigrated from Bavaria to dominant architectural
positions in both areas. It should be said that, for the purposes
of architectural history, Bohemia can be held to have embraced
the margravate of Moravia, and also the dukedom of Silesia
until its annexation by Prussia, whilst the tone of Franconia
was set by the two prince-bishoprics of Bamberg and Wiirz-
burg, rather than by the secular marches of Ansbach and
Bayreuth (which will be considered in the chapter upon palace
architecture).
The reason for the commanding architectural authority of
the two prince-bishoprics was that, for the crucial earlier half of
the eighteenth century, one or both sees were held by members
of the remarkable Schénborn family.°° This family, originating
in the petty nobility of the Rhineland, took its first step to
greater stature with the energetic prince-bishop of Wurzburg
and archbishop-elector of Mainz (1642/47-1673), Johann Philipp
von Schonborn. Johann Philipp, the ‘German Solomon’, was
too preoccupied with reconstructing and preserving peace in
the Empire after the Thirty Years War to be a great builder, but
one of his nephews, Lothar Franz von Schénborn, had no
sooner been elected to the see of Bamberg in 1693 than he began
to make plans for reconstructing the palace there, despite an
election oath to the contrary, and continued to build in his two
sees of Bamberg and Mainz (to which he was elected in 1695) till
the end of his life in 1729. He had a whole brood of nephews,
who were no less avid to build than to accumulate the political
and ecclesiastical dignities that provided the excuse and the
funds for thetr buildings: Friedrich Carl, vice-chancellor of the
Empire (1705-34) and prince-bishop of Bamberg and Wiirz-
burg (1729-46); Johann Philipp Franz, prince-bishop of Wiirz-
burg (1719-24): Damian Hugo, cardinal (from 1715) and
prince-bishop of Speyer (1719-43) and Konstanz (1740-43);
and Franz Georg, archbishop-elector of Trier (1729-56),
prince-bishop of Worms and prince-provost of Ellwangen
(1732-56). Of all these, the two who were the most obsessed by
the demon of building (which they referred to resignedly as their
“Bauwurmb’), and took the most informed and. de-
tailed interest in every aspect of construction and decoration.
were Lothar Franz and Friedrich Carl. The two kept up a
vigorous correspondence, swapping suggestions and craftsmen
with one another, and tapping a whole set of architects for
advice, not only on their own projects, but also on those of
Johann Philipp Franz. It was largely through _ these
two- Lothar Franz was, ex officio as archbishop of Mainz, the
chancellor of the Empire, whence the appointment of his
nephew to the executive post of vice-chancellor at Vienna — that
a Viennese/Franconian architectural axis was created, with the
most fructifying effects for Franconia. It was also Lothar Franz
who, by employing two of the Dientzenhofer brothers as his
court architects, ensured the continued division of this gifted
family between Franconia and Bohemia.
Having been one of the earliest parts of Central Europe to
attract the Comasques (to build the Belvedere at Prague,
1534-41), Bohemia was also to remain longest under the
domination of Jtalian architects—or architects of Italian
never wholly dispensing with them throughout the
Baroque period. It seems possible, indeed, that nascent nat-
lonalist feelings put difficulties in the way of indigenous archi-
tects, Whether Czech- or German-speaking; and it 1s certainty
noteworthy that, whilst the most distinguished family of Ger-
man architects working in Bohemia, the Dientzenhofers, orig-
inated in Bavaria, the foremost Bohemian-born, German-
speaking architect, Balthasar Neumann, made his career in
Germany.
The two Comasque architects who dominated the scene in
the middle years of the seventeenth century were Carlo Lurago
(c. 1618-84) and Francesco Caratti (died in 1677). Both worked
ina ponderous, emphatic tdiom belonging more to the sixteenth
than the seventeenth century, and achieved their chief exterior
effects through the repetition of the same elements over enor-
mously long facades. Both their masterpieces make striking use
of a very plastic giant Order. Caratti’s was the Czernin Palace
(1669ff ).°' built at the opposite end of the hill on which Prague
Castle stands, in a kind of defiant over-trumping of the latter,
for a man who was himself a dilettante architect, but who was
also a rare survivor of the old Bohemian aristocracy resentful of
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the new, Count Humprecht Johann von Czernin. Lurago’s
masterpicce was built not in Bohemia, but just over the
border—the Cathedral of the sovereign bishopric of Passau
(1668ff.). In plan, the Cathedral (which Bishop Thun wished to
be based on that of Salzburg) 1s a conventional cruciform
basilica with a full dome over the crossing (as was still the vogue
at this period; Curatt: had introduced one of the eartiest to
Bohemia 1n 1648 over the crossing of the late sixteenth-century
church of St Salvator in Prague). The church’s greatest impor-
tance lay in its introduction of a succession of sail vaults over
the nave - the first time that this form of construction had been
used in the Empire and an important contribution to the trend
towards the dissolution of churches into a number of centra-
lized units. But Lurago, who was himself a stuccador, was
323 Left Prague, exterior of the Church of the Crusader Knights built by
Jean-Bapliste Mathey, 1679-88
324 Above Prague, fagade of the Czernin Palace built by Francesco Caratu,
1669ff
also responsible for the overall design of the enormously
influential decoration of this church (executed 1677ff by his
fellow Comasques, the frescoist Carpoforo Tencalla, and the
Carlone stuccador troupe), which for the first time in a church
of this kind combined expansive frescoes with richly plastic
cartouche stucco.
Two non-Italians broke the Comasque hegemony in the last
quarter of the seventeenth century, Jean-Baptiste Mathey (c.
1630-95)? and Abraham Leuthner (c. 1639-1701). Both had
been (or, in the case of Leuthner, claimed to have been) tn
Rome, and both invigorated the architectural situation in
Bohemia with new tdeas, the one by example and the other by
precept. Mathey was a Burgundian by birth and, characteristic-
ally for this stage of Central European Baroque architecture,
not an architect but a painter by training, who had been
associated with Claude in Rome. There he became painter-
in-ordinary to a scion of the family raised to greatness in the
person of Wallenstein, Johann Friedrich Count Waldstein.
When this man was elected archbishop of Prague in 1675, he
took Mathey back with him, and at once entrusted him with the
reconstruction of his archiepiscopal palace, and kept him busy
with commissions over the next twenty years. Mathey’s two
most notable works both served as sources of inspiration for
Fischer von Erlach, who was reported to ‘nurse a spectal
325
324
254 Part 1V Central and Eastern Europe
325 Prague, Schloss Troja, garden front showing the staircase built by
Mathey 1679-96
affection for the said Mathey from acknowledged experience in
architecture’. One was the Church (1679-88) of the Crusader
Knights with the Red Star, a chivalric order based in Prague (to
which the Karlskirche was later to be entrusted), of which
Waldstein had been Grand Master since 1668. This church
broke with Comasque traditions in the lucidity of its planning
and in the elegance and low relief of its detailing. The latter is
French in inspiration (notably the overall rustication of the
exterior), but the plan combines the then fashionable oval
(though this had already been employed a century before for the
‘Walsche Kapelle’ of the Italian colony) and a full dome above,
with cruciform arms (alluding to the Crusaders) extended by a
saucer-domed choir to the east. The other work was Schloss
Troja (1679-96), a villa suburbana for Count Sternberg. This
not only broke away from the massive block-like or quad-
rangular Italian Sch/ésser through Mathey’s introduction of
the French pavilion system and projecting wings, but also has
attached to it on the garden side a remarkable oval staircase
incorporating a gigantomachia sculpted by the Heermanns.
Mathey, as a ‘foreigner’ untrained in architecture. was still
dependent on the Italians for the execution of his projects,
which in all cases but the Church of the Crusader Knights seems
to have led to an intrusion of coarser and inappropriate
detailing. And though breaking the dominance of the Com-
asques, his work lay outside the mainstream of development in
Bohemia, so that his real importance resides in his part in the
formation of Fischer von Erlach, during the latter’s fruitful visit
to Prague in 169).
Abraham Leuthner, by contrast, arose out of the milieu of
the Comasque masons, enriching the practical knowledge that
he gained from them with theoretical speculation of his own,
and passing the fruits of both on to the earliest generation of
Dientzenhofers. He first appears working as a mason on the
Czernin Palace, and his one important building was the Cis-
tercian Abbey Church of Waldsassen (1681-1704) in the re-
catholicized Upper Palatinate. In this church certain features of
Passau Cathedral-the domically treated sail vaults over the
nave, and the same combination of richly plastic white stucco
by the Carlone troupe and large frescoes (by the Prague artist
Jakob Steinfels)—are married to reversions to a more in-
digenous type of church— the calotte, rather than a full dome
over the crossing of the non-projecting transept, and the aisle-
less nave with galleried side-chapels all but sealed off from one
another, but with wide arched openings to the nave underneath
the gallery and the entablature. A striking innovation that
Leuthner made in this church, and that subsequently enjoyed
enduring popularity, was the piercing through of the vaults of
these side-chapels to the galleries above. More important than
what Leuthner built, however, was his theoretical treatise, the
Grundtliche Darstelhing der funff Seullen (1677), written, as he
claimed in the foreword, from a ‘true German heart’, and going
beyond a mere treatment of the five Orders to illustrate a
number of interesting plans, including both that of a wall-pillar
church and those of a number of centrally planned churches,
some of symbolic form. The latter, curiously, were translated
into Imaginary designs for garden pavilions by Fischer von
Erlach, who conversely turned Leuthner’s simplified redaction
of Archduke Ferdinand’s star-shaped Schloss outside Prague
(1555-58) into the design for a church. Leuthner’s whole
treatise was drawn on for another compilation by the Bayreuth
court architect, C.P. Dieussart, which was in turn re-edited by
J.L. Dientzenhofer in 1695. Surviving collections of ideal
designs from the Dientzenhofer circle reveal how strongly they
were influenced by the symbolic plans of Leuthner in particular.
Waldsassen came to serve almost as a private academy of the
Dientzenhofers; at least three of the six architect brothers from
this remarkable Bavarian family served in a subordinate cap-
acity under Leuthner or his successor on this building.°
Christoph Dientzenhofer also acted as executant mason for
Abraham Leuthner on Schloss Schlackenwerth (1685ff — the
Schloss from which came Sibylla Augusta of Sachsen-
Lauenburg, the later margravine of Baden-Baden) — and their
two families came, in addition, to be closely connected by
marriage. It may have been guild exclusiveness in their native
Bavaria that drove the Dientzenhofers to seek work farther
afield, at first in Prague and then in the Upper Palatinate and
Franconia as well. The eldest brother, Georg (1643-89) is first
heard of in Prague in 168], and then as Leuthner’s foreman on
Waldsassen in 1682. He went on to build the symbolically
tretoul-planned pilgrimage-church of the Holy Trinity at Kap-
pel (1685-89) for the abbey, and the sail-vaulted, wall-pillar
Jesuit Church of St Martin in Bamberg (1686-89), before being
removed by an early death. Georg paved the way for the careers
of two other brothers in the Upper Palatinate and Franconia:
Wolfgang (1648-1706) and Johann Leonhard (1660-1707).
Wolfgang took up residence in Amberg, whence he built a
number of abbey churches in the Upper Palatinate on fairly
rudimentary wall-pillar plans, possibly basing himself on de-
signs by his brother for the earliest of them. Johann Leonhard
worked under Georg at Waldsassen till he was appointed
architect to the Cistercian Abbey of Ebrach in 1686. Through
taking over the execution of his brother’s church of St Martin,
he also put himself into position to become architect to the see
of Bamberg in 1690, thus cementing his base in Franconia.
With the election of Lothar Franz von Schénborn as bishop of
Bamberg in 1693 he was assured of a busy career, though
nothing that he built had the distinction of the works created by
326
rt ren ne ee
261
82
80
his youngest brother, Johann (1663-1726), who succeeded him
as architect to the see on his death in 1707. Lothar Franz’s own
doubts about Leonhard’s capacities are attested by his refusal
to appoint him as architect to his other see of Mainz in 1698. He
was nonetheless summoned fairly far afield to build his major
project, the Cistercian Abbey Church of Schéntal (realized
after his death 1708-27), which was designed. like one or two
other major churches of the period (e.g. Grosscomburg and the
Jesuit church at Heidelberg), on fundamentally Jate-mediaeval
lines as a hall-church, but in Renaissance garb, with panelled
pilasters applied to the four sides of the pillars, and sail vaults.
Although all the Dientzenhofer brothers appear to have
begun their careers in Prague, only Christoph (1655—]722)
settled there, to become a Bohemian architect by adoption. The
history of Bohemian architecture is fraught with uncertainty
over the authorship of certain key buildings, and the earlier
oeuvre of Christoph Dientzenhofer and Santini Aichel in parti-
cular suffers from some crucial uncertainties. It nonetheless
seems feasible to argue back from Christoph Dientzenhofer’s
attested later works and from a common strain running
through both his work and that of his son, Kilian Ignaz, so as
to assemble as his earlier work a group of churches having one
very important feature in common -— indebtedness to Guarini.
Guarini impinged upon the Bohemian scene both directly
and indirectly. In 1679 he submitted plans for a Theatine
church in Prague to be dedicated to the Blessed Virgin of
Otting. The church was not built till some years later, and
then to different plans, and with a fagade by Santini Aichel.
Guarini’s designs had no immediate resonance, but in 1699
Hildebrandt designed his earliest church, for Count Berka at
Gabel in northern Bohemia, a church clearly indebted in plan
to its namesake of S. Lorenzo in Turin. Hildebrandt’s adap-
tation of one of Guarini’s central plans was not directly
imitated; instead it seems to have provoked a keen interest in
Guarini’s plans for longitudinal churches— which had in the
meantime been published (1686)— notably those for the Thea-
tine church in Prague, S. Maria della Divina Provvidenza in
Lisbon, and the chapel of the Lazarist Mission (now the Archi-
episcopal Palace) at Turin (1673-75 and 1695-97) — though this
was not in fact one of those published amongst the plates later
used for the Architertura Civile. What ensued was less an
imitation of Guarini — the principle behind the intersecting
vaults is very different—than the use of Guarini to license
unconventional forms of vaulting that owed much in technique
to indigenous traditions of masonry. Guarini’s respect for
Gothic architecture is well known, and it is no coincidence that
the one country to take inspiration from Guarini’s experiments
in vaulting, Bohemia, should also have been the country to
engender Santini Aichel’s fanciful reconstructions of Late-
Gothic vault-rib patterns.
The first of the Guarinesque churches attributed to Chris-
toph Dientzenhofer (partly on analogies in detailing with his
earliest known work, the symbolically heart-shaped Magdalen
Chapel at Skalka, 1692-93) is the church of the former Stern-
berg Schloss at Smifrice (1699-1713). This combines elements
from a surprisingly heterogeneous variety of sources: an in-
terior plan which is virtually that of St Lawrence, Gabel, but
which, lacking the corridored envelope of the latter, displays
undulating walls to the exterior—to which the first step had
been taken at Skalka—and a star-shaped rib-vault so faithful to
its Gothic model that this can be dated to the early years of the
sixteenth century, though at Smifice the severies are filled with
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Bohemia and Franconia
programmatically organized frescoes in stucco frames. The
vault, though startling. is explicable: for this church is de-
dicated to the Adoration of the Kings. who were led to
Bethlehem by just such a star (and the Prophets and Sibyls in
the frescoes foretold the birth of Christ as the star had). The star
also alludes to the name of the family (lit. “Starmountain’). The
idea of exposing the interior plan as undulating walls to the
exterior doubtless derives from S. Maria della Divina Pro-
vvidenza. Christoph Dientzenhofer’s innovation. which was to
remain a distinguishing feature both of his own work and of the
early work of his son, was the way in which the system of
supports sustaining the vault and the walling between are
sharply distinguished from, and bear no necessary relation to,
one another —the so-called *baldachin-system’.
The next church of the group, the Church of St Joseph
attached to the Pauline Friary at ObofiSté (] 702—12). is the first
to have what are apparently Guarinesque vaults. In fact,
though the plan of the church 1s clearly indebted to that of the
Archiepiscopal chapel at Turin, from which it derives the idea
326 Bamberg, facade of the Jesuit church of St Martin built by Georg
Dientzenhofer, 1686-89
330
327 Above Smirice, exterior of the Schloss church of the Adoration of the
Mag built by Christoph Dientzenhofer, 1699-1713
328 Right Smirice, interior of the church
of a nave composed of two rounded bays with a subsidiary bay
between, and intersecting vaults, these vaults are quite
differently constructed. Where Guarini designed domes with a
skeletal framework of tapering ribs, Christoph Dientzenhofer
created three slightly bombeé vaults, with groins at their junc-
tions with one another, eaten away by deep triangular pene-
trations arising from the arches of the clerestory windows and
those of the east and west ends. This is exactly the same kind of
empirical vault-construction, more Gothic survival than
Guarinesque, that can be seen in the two symbolically planned
churches, both connected with the Dientzenhofer circle, at
Westerndorf (1668) and at Kappel. At Oboyisté, however,
another device characteristic of Christoph Dientzen-
hofer emerged: the “syncopation’ of the vaults in relation to
the plan. Where the eye expects—and Guarini had
created-~domes or domical vaults corresponding to the
concave-walled bays at either end of the nave, only two broad
V-shaped ribs touching at the tips are left by the penetrations:
where the eye would have expected a double transverse rib over
the ‘closed’ central section formed by the clustered wall-
pilasters, is a smooth section of domical vault expanding out
into the adjacent bays. In 1733 the vault was crudely frescoed in
such a way~—as so often in these churches—as to mask the
architect’s original intentions: nonetheless, the illusionistic
dome over the centre, absurd though it looks, echoes the
essential ‘illogicality’ of Christoph Dientzenhofer’s vaults in
relation to his bi-axial ground-plan.
At this point comes a church whose attribution to Christoph
Dientzenhofer is reasonably secure, the Jesuit Church of St
Nicholas, Mala Strana (the “Lesser Side’ of Prague). The
building history of this church proceeded in fits and starts.
Though the foundation stone was laid in 1673. it was not until
1703 that the church was begun, to new plans by Christoph
Dientzenhofer. Shortage of funds caused building to be broken
off after the church was roofed in 1705; and the nave was only
vaulted and the facade built in 1709-11. The east end was closed
by a provisional, illusionistically painted wooden screen until
the domed choir and single tower were built by Kihan Ignaz
Dientzenhofer in 1737-59.
Perhaps because it was for a Jesuit House of Profession,
Christoph Dientzenhofer adopted a form of construction un-
usual for Bohemia — that of a galleried wall-pillar church. How-
ever, not only did he support the front of the galleries on three-
dimensional arches, he also set the pillars to face diagonally into
the nave, with the intention (as proven by early copies of his
plans) of setting over them a syncopated series of three-
dimensionally curved transverse arches meeting tangentially
over the centre of the bays (1.e. the ‘voids’) beneath, and leaving
vacant lens-shaped areas of vault between them, corresponding
to the pillars (the ‘solids’). These plans show that the genesis of
these apparently Guarinesque ribs, which were to be adopted
with such enthusiasm in Franconia by Christoph’s brother
Johann, and from him by Neumann, was entirely non-
functional: they were to be decoratively applied to a continuous
tunnel-vault. 1t is possible that these plans represent ex post
facto rationalizauons of the executed vault, which is of empiri-
cal wavy construction, with concealed ribs on the outside. and
that the idea of exploiting them visually only came later. for at
the Benedictine Abbey Church of St Margaret, Brevnov (begun
in 1708, taken over and completed by Christoph Dientzenhofer
1709-15). they are also to be found over the westernmost bay of
the choir (1714-15) but not over the earlier nave. Over the nave
of Brevnov. and over that of the Church of the Poor Clares at
Eger (Cheb. 1707-11). commonly attributed to Christoph. is to
be found his more usual system of intersecting sections of
vault— syncopated at Brevnov. and bi-axially organized at Eger
(though a sectional plan exists of Eger. showing three-
dimensional ribs). It was his brother Johann who. at Banz
(1710-19). took the further step of amalgamating the synco-
pated system of intersecting vaults with these three-dimensional
ribs. Unfortunately, at St Nicholas, as at OboriSte, Christoph’s
vaults were again found too disturbing for the eye. and were
obliterated under a vast illusionistic fresco by J.L. Kracker in
1760-61. This subsequent overpainting obscures the extent to
which the canted pillars and ribs would have formed an
autonomous system — the so-called ‘baldachin-system’— within
the otherwise conventional plan of the church. This emerges
much more clearly at Brevnov. in which Dientzenhofer used the
same canted pillars. placed against the walls (which themselves
bow slightly outwards) very much in the manner of the shafted
buttresses of the earliest Gothic wall-pillar churches. In the
facade of St Nicholas. and in the side elevations—treated as
facades — of Brevnov and Eger. his love of curvature and of the
interplay of advancing and receding sections is given full rein. as
{4
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Bohemia and Franconia
329 Bottom left Prague. nave of the Jesuit church of St Nicholas on the
Lesser Side, built by Christoph Dientzenhofer, 1703-11
330 Below Obonsté, nave vault of the friary church built by Christoph
Dientzenhofer, 1702-12
331 Bottom right Brevnov (Prague), interior of the abbey church built by
Christoph Dientzenhofer, 1709. 15
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332 Opposite Prague, exterior of St John Nepomuk ‘on the Rock’ built by
K. £. Dientzenhofer, 1730-39
333 Above Prague, facade of the Villa Amerika built by Kilian Ignaz
Dientzenhofer, 1717-20
at Smirice, but without the same compulsion from the plan.
Such are the main features of the most important of the
churches known to be by, or attributed to, Christoph Dientzen-
hofer—a man whom the Latin chronicler of a monastery
described in 1699 as ‘with a fine understanding of his art,
working far and wide, though quite incapable of either reading
or writing’ (not strictly true, as he could certainly sign his
name). Though extraordinarily diverse, these churches display
an inner consistency as well as, in the literal sense, a family
resemblance to the works by other Dientzenhofers. Whereas,
however, his brother Johann immediately exploited hts three-
dimensionally curved ribs and galleries at Banz, his son Kilian
1] gnaz (1689-1751) at first struck out on his own, and only in the
1730s began to exploit certain of his father’s ideas. Unlike his
father, he received a formal education before being sent as a
journeyman to Vienna in 1707. He did not return from there till
1717, making a further study trip in 1725, and it is evident that
his experience of the metropolis inclined him at first to more
conventional solutions, and to the central plan tn particular. It
seems clear that the somewhat staid vaults of the Loreto
Church in Prague, for which his father signed the contract in
March 1722, dying in June of the same year, are due to Kilian
Ignaz, whereas the picturesque screen front to the whole site,
begun in May 1721, is almost entirely Christoph’s.
Kilian Ignaz’s oeuvre was vast, and included everything from
town palaces and churches to monasteries and little chapels in
the countryside. Certain idiosyncrasies of detailing recur 1n his
work, several of them Hildebrandtian—label-like capitals to
pilasters, often linked together, heavy curvilinear pediments
isolated in the wall, windows cut out of the wall like patterns in
pastry, piers crowned by broken segmental pediments in the
interiors of his churches—but his catholicity of approach in
planning his churches is almost too great for a consistent
preference to be sought or a clear line of development found.
Almost all his designs are, however, variations upon a central
plan; and when the circumstances of the commission required a
longitudinal church, the nave was generally bi-axial.
Kilian ]gnaz’s first work on returning to Prague from Vienna
was the exquisite little summer pavilion for Count Michna, the
so-called Villa Amerika (1717-20) which combines Hilde-
brandtian decorative motifs with local features like the dormer
window set in an attic balustrade. This was followed by two
orthodox centrally planned churches, St John Nepomuk on the
Hradschin above Prague (1720-28) and the pilgrimage-church
of the Virgin's Nativity at Nicov (Nitzau, 1720-27). St John
Nepomuk is like a straitened version of the Piarist Church at
Vienna (whose ultimate vaulting with a drumless, pendentive-
less dome like St John Nepomuk may even derive from sug-
gestions made by Kilian Ignaz when he studicd it in its un-
finished state in 1725). At Nicov, though equally innocent of
any debt to his father, Kilian Ignaz nonetheless seems to have
timidly resorted to inspiration from Guarini’s own churches for
the tapering ribs of the conched arms, and for the drumless
dome with oval windows between the tapering ribs, disguised as
260 Part 1V Central and Eastern Europe
an octagon on the exterior. More important, however, is the
way in which Kilian Ignaz runs a well-lit gallery behind the piers
of the dome. For whereas Christoph, with his ‘baldachin-
system’, created an autonomous skeleton of wall-pillars and
vaults within the neutral outer envelope of the walls of his
churches, Kilian Ignaz was to arrive at a more organic solution
in which whole piers were isolated from the walls as the struc-
turally significant elements sustaining the vaults. The vaults
themselves, in consequence, were usually treated as unified
(generally frescoed) wholes, sustained by wall-arches round the
perimeter, but not articulated by ribs. Neither church yet
exemplifies this fully, though in both the system 1s adumbrated
by the way in which the entablature of the piers is carried into
the cross arms, only to stop short at the outer wall, creating a
clear distinction between the vault-sustaining and the infilling
parts of the church.
In Kilian I[gnaz’s longitudinal churches this treatment results
in buildings whose exterior, in which the walls play the major
part, is governed by a love of alternating convexities and
concavities, Whilst their interior is defined by the system of
supports, with the walls as a negative element behind and
between. The first major church in which this is exemplified 1s the
Benedictine Abbey Church of Wahlstatt (Legnickie Pole,
1725-31) built as a triumphant reassertion of Catholicism in
Protestant Silesia by the abbot of Braunau (Broumov).
Externally this is an ovoid church, extended by a rounded choir
at one end. and faced by a twin-towered facade with a convex
centre the other. Inside, however, the nave is characteristically
divided by Kilian Ignaz into two equal parts, so that the central
cross axis is closed by a wall-pillar on either side. These wall-
pillars, and those at the extremities of the nave, are treated like
the clustered columns of Gothic churches, with pilaster frag-
ments supporting the wall-arches, and attached columns taking
the peripheral arches of the vault (which is unified by a fresco by
C.D.Asam). In the choir a heavy layered entablature 1s sup-
ported by attached columns placed 1n front of the walls, and
supports arches framing the windows above, creating the effect
of walls and windows being stretched behind the essential
scaffolding of the fabric, asin the nave. A very similar treatment
to that of the choir was applied by Kilian Ignaz to the nave of
one of his most attractive churches, the picturesquely sited St
John Nepomuk ‘na Skalee’ (‘on the Rock’ 1730-39) in the New
Town at Prague. This has a twin-towered facade similar to that
of Wahlstatt, save that here the towers are canted, as in St
Peter's, Vienna. Behind this, the nave is shaped as a concave-
sided octagon, with a transverse oval bay at either end, and a
three-quarter circle choir to the east. Though the intersections
of these areas produced three-dimensional arches in the vaults,
these, as in Guarini’s centrally planned churches, are the logical
consequence of the intersections, and not wilfully introduced
like those of Kilian Ignaz’s father. The complete frescoing of
the vaults again highlights the outer perimeter of arches sus-
taining them. It was not until the Jesuit church at Oparany
(Woporschan, 1732-35) that Kilian Ignaz used a pair of
tangential three-dimensional ribs: and it is characteristic that
he neither applied them ornamentally like his father at Brevnov,
334 Above right Prague, interior of St John Nepomuk ‘on the Rock’
335 Right Carlsbad, choir of St Mary Magdalen built by K. I.
Dientzenhofer, 1733-36
ws)
tae
in
nor insyncopation to the structure below. like his uncle at Banz.
The plan of the nave of Oparany is again bi-axial—and indeed
derived from Eger—and the tangential ribs are the result of the
projection into the vault of the two transverse ovals out of
which the nave is notionally constructed. In contrast to Banz,
they meet over the piers. and not over the voids between, as in
the modified copy of Christoph’s sectional plan of Eger. Below,
the attached columns from which they rise are linked by Kilian
Ignaz’s characteristic broken segmental pediments: whilst the
articulation of the whole church into vault-sustaining supports
and integument-like walls is again lucidly carried through.
At this point Kilian Ignaz produced one of his most success-
ful churches, in the series of plans for which the vitality of his
imagination is also best exemplified—the Church of St Mary
Magdalen (1733-36) standing on the slope above the hot
springs of Carlsbad (Karlovy Vary). In his first two plans he
intended to exploit the conspicuous site, as with St John ‘na
Skalce’, by setting the twin towers diagonally — with a recessed
centre in the first version, and as part of a continuously curved
facade in the second. Behind this in the first version he planned
an octagonal nave with a star-shaped rib vault eaten into by
three-dimensional arches emanating from the oval spaces 1n the
axes and the niches on the diagonals, and in the second version
a symmetrical succession of transverse oval vestibule, length-
wise Oval nave, transverse oval choir, and octagonal eastern
towers, resulting in aremarkable double-waisted plan. The final
plan was more sober: a rib-domed lengthwise oval nave. with
concave-sided spaces on the axes, prolonged by a transverse
oval choir at the east, and with rib-headed exedrae on the
diagonals. The ribbed dome and diagonals are reminiscent of
Nicov, and Kilian Ignaz exploited the ideas of that church yet
further by taking an undulating gallery right round the church
to the high altar. to describe a light-filled path behind the
structural skeleton of the church —the segmental]-headed ‘piers’
framing the diagonal openings. In this church Kilian Ignaz’s
lucid distinction between the tectonic and the enveloping parts
of his buildings is most fully and happily realized: he thereby
comes close, not through the imitation of his father, but by
pursuing his own development, both to Guarimi and to the
never wholly submerged Gothic tradition in Bohemia—of
which his projected star-shaped rib vault over this church was
but another instance.
At the same time as St Mary Magdalen was being put up,
Kilian Ignaz was designing the much more bizarre centrally
planned church of St Nicholas (1732-37) in the Old City of
Prague for the abbot of the Benedictine Emmaus monastery.
Some of the strangeness of this church is due to the site, and to
the subsequent clearances around it. St Nicholas was the
rebuilding of a church that had been for two centuries in the
hands of the heretical Utraquists—thus requiring its archi-
tecture to be something of an affirmation-—on a site so hemmed
in that it could only be developed upwards. Kilian Ignaz created
the main facade out of the long south flank, setting a strongly
detached tower at either end to flank the set-back dome, to
make a picturesquely composed group from afar, repeating this
triadic arrangement in the centrepiece framing the portal
336 Above right Prague, side facade of St Nicholas in the Old City built by
K. I. Dientzenhofer, 1732-37
337 Right Prague, interior of St Nicholas in the Old City
262 Part 1V Central and Eastern Europe
dominating the street. In the interior of the nave the church ts
divided into supporting and enveloping elements, as at Nicov.
with a wrought-iron balconied gallery running round behind
the supports; but the contribution of light is missing, despite the
pierced domes of the diagonal chapels (cf. the Kollegienkirche
at Salzburg). Instead, to obtain light, the vertical emphasis is
taken to extremes: the segmentally-pedimented attached col-
umns flanking the diagonals are carried up as caryatids in the
intermediate zone, then as recessed attached columns flanking
pilasters in the drum, to culminate as tapering ribs in the
lanterned cloister-vault. The interior is also unusual amongst
Kilian Ignaz’s churches for the amount of stucco ornament (by
Bernard Spinetti) complementing C. D. Asam’s frescoes.
Kilian Ignaz was never able to realize the major con-
ventual church for which he produced such stimulating designs
for the Ursulines of Kutna Hora— with the church forming the
diagonal of an irregular hexagon (cf. Caspar Moosbrugger’s
second plan for St Gallen)— but at the end of his career he was
appropriately chosen to add the domed choir and single east
tower to his father’s church of St Nicholas, Mala Strana
(1745-53), for the Jesuits. The chotce was appropriate in
familial rather than stylistic terms, for the massive sobriety of
the interior of Kilian Ignaz’s domed triconch contrasts strongly
with the undulating fluidity of his father’s nave. By setting the
drummed dome upon curved pendentives, Kilian Ignaz even
lost the opportunity to create three-dimensional arches at the
intersection of the circular centre and the conches. Moreover,
the paired columns placed in front of the piers and tn the drum
are now purely rhetorical devices, not distinct structural fea-
tures. But Kilian Ignaz is thoroughly vindicated by the
unforgettable contribution that his dome and tower make to
the silhouette of Prague. Even though it is clear that a single
tower at the south-east corner of the Jesuits’ site was a feature
of the earliest designs for rebuilding their House, and that
the tower was executed by Kilian Ignaz’s son-in-law An-
selmo Lurago, it required genius to balance dome and
tower through contrast rather than conformity-—setting
concavity off against convexity, tapering against roundedness,
and richness against bulk. It is perhaps appropriate that this
last major achievement of the Bohemian Baroque should
evoke, without imitating (though there may well be an allusion
in the seraph-herms of the penultimate southern nave window),
the similar collocation of dome and single tower in Borromini’s
completion of S. Andrea delle Fratte.
In following through the particular strand of Bohemian
Baroque architecture represented by the Dientzenhofers, strict
chronology has been disregarded. Bohemia, like Austria itself,
despite the reassertion of native, or at least German talent in the
building world, continued to harbour a number of welsche
architects, though many of these were by now second or even
third generation immigrants. Ottavio Broggio (1668-1742), for
instance, from Leitmeritz (Litoméfice) dominated archi-
tectural activity in that region, building churches—e.g. the
Cistercian Abbey Church of Ossegg (Osek, 1712-18)—and
Schlosser—e.g. Ploschkowitz (Ploskovice, 1720-25), for the
estranged wife of Gian Gastone de’ Medict—characterized by
richly profiled mouldings and a Dientzenhofer-like interplay of
convexity and concavity. Italians were particularly in demand
to build town palaces and country Sch/ésser, and in carrying
out these commissions were instrumental in giving secular
architecture in Bohemia a far more Austrian stamp than church
architecture. Both D. E. Rossi and Domenico Martinelli came
from Vienna, the former in 1692 to supervise the completion of
the interiors of the Czernin Palace in Prague, and the latter on
various occasions between 1692 and 1705 to make designs for
Schloss Aussee (Moravia) and Schloss Landskron (Bohemia)
for Prince Liechtenstein, for Schloss Austerlitz (Moravia) for
Count Kaunitz, and for the Sternberg Palace in Prague. A
notable feature of both the Sternberg Palace (c. 1700ff) and
Schloss Austerlitz (post 1698ff.) is that they make use of a
338 Above left Schloss Karlskrone, exterior built by J. B. Santini Aichel,
Mel-22
339 Left Sedlec, nave and aisles of the abbey church built by Santini
Aichel, 1702—06
426
338
projecting oval saloon in the centre. A yet clearer instance of
inspiration from Fischer von Erlach is Schloss Liblitz (Liblice)
built from 1699 onwards by G. B. Alliprandi (1665-1720), who
had come from Vienna to Prague in 1695 to take over the
supervision of the Czernin Palace from D.E. Rossi, 1n direct
imitation of a design of Fischer's later engraved for the
Entwurff. The projecting oval saloon maintained its popularity
in Bohemia till the 1740s and beyond, being found for instance
in Schloss Ploschkowitz. on both fronts of J. Augustoni’s
Schloss Trpist, and in three Sch/ésser inspired by Fischer's
Althan Garden Palace — the Czech F. M. Kanka’s (1674-1766)
Weltrus (c. 1715ff.). Santini Aichel’s three-winged Karlskrone
(1721-22). and the anonymous Karlshof (post 1730).
Schloss Karlskrone was the last work of Johann Blasius
Santini Aichel (1677-1723), the most remarkable of all the
indigenous IJtalians.°> Though to his contemporaries he was
most renowned asa secular architect — in 1722 he was said to be
serving over forty noble clients in Bohemia and Moravia —it is
not for Karlskrone or the Kolowrat/Thun-Hohenstein
(1710-20) and Morzin,Czernin (1713-14) palaces in Prague
that he is now remembered, so much as for his single-handed
invention of a new genre of church architecture, since chris-
tened ‘Baroque Gothic’.
Santini Aichel was the grandson of an Italian immigrant
mason, and the son of a stonemason who frequently worked for
Mathey. Whether inspired by the latter's example. or because
he was a cripple, Santini Aichel left 1t to his younger brother to
pursue his father’s craft, and himself trained as a painter. Yet in
1702, with no other known work to his credit. he was already
considered competent to replace the Bohemian German archi-
Bohemia and Franconia 263
tect P. I. Bayer (1650-1733) in the rebuilding of the Cistercian
Abbey Church of Sedlec—a choice as bold as that of
C.D. Asam for the rebuilding of Weltenburg. Sedlec had been
burnt down by the Hussites in 142], and its reconstruction
therefore took on the character of a reassertion of the pristine
faith. from which Utraquism. the Bohemian Brethren and
Lutheranism had been so many aberrations. Gothic was chosen
both as a conscious reversion to the past, and because in
Bohemia there were still echoes of Ferdinand I’s insistence. in
the midst of a precocious adoption of the Italian Renaissance
for secular works, that Gothic forms—and particularly
vaults —were alone ‘churchy’. The reversion to Gothic was also
the architectural equivalent of the religious politics involved in
the resurrection or creation of the cults of Bohemian national
saints, culminating in the virtual re-invention of St John
Nepomuk. And just as in Southern Germany the old orders
rebuilt their abbeys and churches, and filled them with frescoes
and sculpture glorifying their history. in Bohemia the same
orders — the Benedictines, the Cistercians, and the Premonstra-
tensians—employed Santini Aichel to build in his historicizing
‘Gothic’ style.
There were other instances of the imitation of genuine Gothic
vaults, as we have seen in Smifice and Kilian lgnaz Dientzen-
hofer’s first design for Carlsbad, but Santini Aichel, exploiting
the possibilities of stucco and taking his cue from the non-
340 Left Kladruby, interior of the abbey church
341 Above Kladruby, exterior of the abbey church buill by Santini Aichel.
1712-26
34]
340
342
264 Part IV Central and Eastern Europe
tectonic nature of Late-Gothic rib vaults in Bohemia, went
beyond this to an imaginative recreation of such Late-Gothic
vaults in terms of a different geometry. The exteriors of Sedlec
and Kladruby could pass muster as the genuine article at least
as well as Hawksmoor’s quadrangle at All Souls, Oxford, but
their vaults are unmistakably personal. At the Benedictine
Abbey Church of Kladruby, indeed, razed both by the Hussites
and in the Thirty Years War, and rebuilt by Santini Aichel
(1712-26), the abbot showed how far even the clients were from
aiming at archaeological accuracy by writing of the Bohemian-
crowned crossing-dome that it was ‘more Gottico nondum
viso’-m a hitherto unheard-of Gothic manner — particularly
rich in pinnacles. At Kladruby, Santini Aichel not only created
pistachio-green rib vaults of a patterned complexity worthy to
vie with Kutna Hora, but also designed altars that terminate in
a riotous thicket of crocketed nodding pinnacles; but this
exuberant adoption of Gothic was not taken so far as to
preclude very Baroque frescoes by Cosmas Damian Asam on
the high walls of the nave and in the crossing-lantern.
Santini Aichel’s Gothic ventures, which included the rebuild-
ing of the Premonstratensian Abbey Church of Zeliv (Seelau,
17] 3-20) as a galleried hall-church on the lines of Kutna Hora,
and the addition of three-dimensionally curved galleries to the
Gothic Cistercian Abbey Church of Zd°ar (Saar, c. 1710), did
not preclude churches in a more orthodox Baroque vein, in
which his ingenuity was manifested in the invention of striking
plans. Two of these, Kiritein (Kitiny, c. 1710) and Maria-
Teinitz (Marianskeé Tynice, 1711 ff.), were Greek cross-shaped
pilgrimage-churches, which Santini Aichel found new ways of
integrating into the containing cloister that was a traditional
feature of Bohemian pilgrimage-sites. At Maria-Teinitz (now a
ruin) the fourth side of a quadrangle with kidney-shaped
chapels in the corners was clamped on to one arm of the church
thus creating an imaginary prolongation of the cloister through
the church past the image, like the walk of a Carthusian
monastery. At Kiritein the same occurs, yet with the additional
complexity that, whilst the cloister, set with a tower-shaped
chapel, clasps and enters the two sides of the south arm of the
church, the east and west arms are mantled by two-storey
ambulatories also opening into the church. In both Kiritein and
Maria-Teinitz the interiors are distinguished by detailing in
very shallow relief and the rounding inwards of piers and
pilasters, emphasizing continuity with the drum-less domes and
vaults above. This undistracted expression of interior space is
given full rein in the Benedictine Abbey Church of Raigern
(Rajhrad, 1722ff., completed posthumously), which is com-
posed, behind a somewhat eclectically detailed concave facade,
as a succession of drum-less oval-domed spaces —a lengthwise
oval, followed by an octagon, which protrudes externally from
recessed walls, and finally a cross-wise rectangle with rounded
piers. It is a remarkable spatial sequence, different in character
from those later to be found in the works of Kilian Ignaz
Dientzenhofer or J. M. Fischer, both in the smooth continuity
between walls and vaults, and in the flowing transitions, the
sense of flux and reflux, between the voluminous wholes thus
created. Typically, the three spaces have a symbolic justi-
342 Above right Kttiny, vaults of the pilgrimage-church built by Santini
Aichel, c. 1710
343 Right Zelena Hora (7d’ar), exterior of the pilgrimage-church built by
Sanuni Aichet, 1720-22
344
343
fication, revealed by an inscription on the arch over the altar:
Faciamus hic tria tabernacula—St Petcr’s impetuous reaction to
the Transfiguration.
The most remarkable of all Santini Aichel’s churches ts
governed by symbolism in its very essence; it also represents a
striking synthesis between his two modes of building —the
‘Gothic’ and the Baroque. Like any Bohemian architect. his
oeuvre contains a number of centrally, and often symbolically
planned votive chapels, of which the most successful is the
domed triangular chapel of St Anne (celebrating the trinity of
St Anne, the Virgin and Christ). One of Santini Aichel’s most
constant clients was the abbot of Zd’ar, for whom he not only
rebuilt the abbey and modified the church, but also put up a
variety of symbolically shaped buildings, including out-
buildings in the form of the abbot’s initials, a court in the shape
of a lyre, and a chapel to the Virgin at Oby¢ctov like a tortoise in
plan (betokening constancy). In 1719 the tongue of John of
Nepomuk, supposedly martyred for his refusal to utter the
secrets of the confessional, was miraculously rediscovered in an
undecayed state. Thereupon, the abbot, whose monastery had
been transplanted to Zd*ar from Nepomuk exactly five centu-
ries before, decided to build a votive chapel on an adjacent hill,
itself rechristened Zelena Hora (Green Hill) after the hill at
Nepomuk, in the shape of a five-pointed star—an allusion not
only to the five stars that had hovered round the martyr’s head
when he was thrown into the Moldau, but also a reference to
the abbey’s quincentenary. Santini Aichel, however, entered so
far into the spirit of the abbot’s conception that every feature of
the building is imbued with symbolic significance, whilst trans-
cending symbolic pedantry (as exemplified in, say, Sir Thomas
Tresham’s triangular lodge at Rushton) as consummately as 1n
S. Ivo della Sapienza. The plan of the chapel, with its five
tangential oval chapels alternating with five tongue-shaped
altar-niches, is a cross between Fischer von Erlach’s crypt-
chapel at Schloss Frain and his designs for garden pavilions.
The word tongue-shaped ts used advisedly, because this shape
recurs not only in the elevation of the niches, but also in the
doors, windows and narrow openings to the chapels, whilst the
saint’s tongue Is represented in stucco as the centre-piece of the
dome. Santint's adoption of-—appropriately named — lancet
windows thus has a dual significance, alluding both to the
‘Sword of the Lord. the Sword of Gideon’, as the saint's tongue
was lauded for its steadfast refusal to utter the secrets of the
confessional, and to the mediaeval past of Zd*ar. Triangular
windows lighting the ambulatory and gallery have a similarly
dual significance. Throughout the church, five-. six-, and eight-
pointed stars celebrate St John Nepomuk, the Virgin, and the
Cistercian order. Inside. the straight balustrades of the tribune
emphasize the decagonal plan of the body of the church, whilst
the alternately projecting and receding concave sections of the
upper gallery, scored with Gothic ribbing underneath, bring
out the five-pointed star again. And whilst at the lower level the
five altar-niches are closed. and light floods in from the lancet
openings to the chapels, above the situation is reversed. Out-
side, the precinct round the church ts contained by a ten-
pointed cloister housing five chapels, both in calculated anti-
strophe to the church, and in further allusion to the decagonal
Gothic fountain embodying Zd°ar’s Latin name — Fons Mariae.
Such a wealth of symbolism results in a church whose idiosyn-
cracy verges upon the bizarre; but the way in which this is
translated on the exterior— which has a more angular, Gothic
appearance —and in the intertor—where there is a more Bar-
Bohemia and Franconia 265
oque play with convexity and concavity and with light —into
interpenetrating forms and plans is both intellectually and
aesthetically exciting.
One of the sources of inspiration for Santini Aichel’s sym-
bolically planned churches was Kappel and the series of sym-
bolic plans that this inspired the Dientzenhofers to create. The
only one of the five brothers (a sixth barely seems to have
functioned as an architect) not to have been considered so far 1s
the one who acted as the vital link between the progressive
architecture of Bohemia and that of Franconia. Johann
(1663-1726), the youngest. who appears to have begun his
career by turning his back on unconventional architecture. He
first worked as executant mason for his brother Leonhard, and
thus came to the notice of Lothar Franz von Schonborn, who in
1699 sent him to Rome ‘to profit from the sight and observation
of the most notable palaces and buildings of those parts’.
Johann was the only one of the brothers to have this direct
experience of Italy, and the clear implication was that he was
being groomed to build palaces for his patron. For the moment,
however, his brother held the post of court architect, there were
no funds for other projects, and so on his return in 1700 Johann
took up the post of court architect to the prince-abbot of Fulda.
Fulda was one of the oldest Benedictine monasteries in
Germany. and housed the bones of the German Apostle, St
Boniface. It was therefore natural that the church should be
rebuilt as the abbey approached its millennium (1704-11), and
that Johann Dientzenhofer, whose task was complicated by the
original insistence (common at the time) on retaining the two
west towers as emblems of the past, should—fresh from
Rome -— have done so on a conventional Latin-cross plan using
a dome and the maximum Roman gravitas. The weakest feature
is, ironically, the vaulting—a plain tunnel vault divided into
alternating sections by transverse arches, and with deep pene-
trations from the clerestory windows.
In the meantime Leonhard Dientzenhofer had died (1707),
and Johann succeeded his brother in his various posts at
Bamberg, and also at the Benedictine Abbey of Banz.°° As
court architect at Bamberg his chief employment was, from
1711 onwards, to build Schloss Weissenstein at Pommersfelden
for Lothar Franz, which will be considered in the section on
palace architecture; but at the same time he began to build the
church at Banz (1710-19). It was in this church that Johann
introduced syncopated vaults with three-dimensional ribs, a
combination of two ideas that his brother Christoph had as yet
only made upon paper. The church consists of a broad two-bay
nave and a long, narrow choir. The nave is thus bt-axially
divided, with canted and curved ends creating an overall effect
of centralization, as at ObofiSté and Eger. However, Johann
has here brought the concave central pier of these two churches
out from the wall, making it a wall-pillar, pierced by a gallery
supported on three-dimensionally curved arches either side,
like a fragment of the nave of St Nicholas, Mala Strana.
It was likewise the unexecuted plan of St Nicholas that
inspired the syncopated vaults, with three-dimensional arches
meeting over the voids, and lens-shaped sections of vault over
the supports. But whereas St Nicholas was a longitudinal
church with its syncopated divisions superimposed on a tunnel-
vault, Banz is bi-axial, and has three tangential sail
vaults — bounded by twisted three-dimensional ribs, with the
central one not only more distended than those at either end.
but also marked out as the centre of the whole vault by an
illusionistically set fresco of Pentecost. In marked contrast to
346
370
266 Part1V Central and Eastern Europe
the decoration of Christoph Dientzenhofer’s churches, Mel-
chior Steidl’s frescoes and J.J. Vogel’s Berainesque stucco are
not afterthoughts, but integral to the conception of the interior.
And though in some respects Banz appears like an eclectic
combination of Christoph’s ideas, the result is so organically
coherent — not least the three-dimensional ribs, which here twist
with the curvature of the vaults that they bound—that one is
driven to wonder whether tn his last churches Christoph was
not borrowing from his brother, rather than the other way
about. Further evidence of Johann’s inventiveness 1s provided
by the high altar, which overcomes the Tridentine ban on jubés
cutting off the congregation from the monks’ choir and high
altar by an illusionistic trick. The monks’ choir is here placed
behind the congregational high altar in the old-fashioned
way — but both share the same altarpiece, which is placed on the
rear wall of the choir, and only appears to be framed by the altar
surround!
It is regrettable that the see and principality of Bamberg did
not aflord Johann Dientzenhofer the same wealth of commiss-
ions as his brother and nephew. His craft status precluded
him from a pivotal role in secular commissions, whilst Fran-
conia~ much of which had gone Protestant — lacked the plenti-
ful religious houses of Swabia and Bavaria. Towards the end of
his life, however, he came into contact with Balthasar Neu-
mann, who appears to have inspired him to use his empirical
skill in constructing vaults in a new way. How exceptional these
skills were we know from a letter of 1724 of Lothar Franz von
Schonborn to his nephew Friedrich Carl, regretting that Dient-
zenhofer's gout and consumption made it impossible to send
him to construct a vaulted sala terrena in Schloss Gollersdorf
like that in Pommersfelden (which has tangential three-
dimensional ribs), and saying that he knew no one else com-
petent to do so (the fact that Friedrich Carl made the request
shows that it was beyond Hildebrandt’s competence — which is
not without signficance for the arguments about his role in the
planning of the Court Church and Schonborn Chapel at
Wurzburg).
In 1720 Lothar Franz lent Johann Dientzenhofer to another
nephew, Johann Philipp Franz, to supervise the building of his
new Residenz at Wurzburg. This task he performed for the next
344 Below Zelena Hora, gallery of the pilgrimage-church
345 Right Banz, plan of the abbey church built by Johann Dientzenhofer,
1710-19
three years, under Balthasar Neumann, who as yet lacked
practical experience of architecture. We know that this assis-
tance also extended to making designs at Neumann’s request.
In 172] Johann Philipp Franz decided to rebuild a chapel built
on to the north transept of the cathedral as a mausoleum for
himself and his family.°? With his usual impetuosity he de-
molished the old chapel straight away, and set about procuring
plans for the new from as many designers as possible. Most of
the designs share a generic similarity, because Johann Philipp
Franz’s way of inviting designs was to send out a redaction of
his own ideas for modification and criticism. This now lost
design, which, with certain alterations, remained the basis for
the executed chapel, laid down a domed central area housing
the altar and outside entrance in opposite niches on one axis,
and two kidney-shaped recesses housing a pair of monuments
on the other axis. The junction of the vaults of the kidney-
shaped recesses with the central rotunda produced pronounced
three-dimensionally curved arches. This 1s the inevitable conse-
quence of any arched opening to a cylindrical space, albeit one
requiring considerable skill in construction. It is no accident
that some of the most successful instances of its accomplish-
ment were in France, where Gothic skill in stereotomy was
applied to classical designs — by Delorme in the chapels at Anet
and Villers-Cotterets, and by Francois Mansart in the Visitan-
dine Church in Paris. In one version of the design three-
dimensional arch-ribs tangential to these arches departed from
pilasters set against the rear curve of the recesses. The author of
this seminal lost design is not known. Neumann, in the in-
scription placed traditionally in the knop of the dome, only
described himself as ‘director’ of the work. All the evidence,
however, points to Johann Dientzenhofer, here applying his
peculiar skills to the problem of a chapel centred— in accor-
dance with his patron’s express wish-on a ‘Cuppola
alVitahtana’.
The attribution is made almost certain by the evidence of the
competing designs made for Fulda’s priory of Holzkirchen by
Neumann and Johann Dientzenhofer between 1724-the date
of election of the new prior, Bonifatius von Hutten, the brother
of J.P. F. von Schonborn’s successor as prince-bishop of Wiirz-
burg the same year—and 1726, the year of Dientzenhofer’s
death. Whereas Neumann's surviving design for the
church — which was the one chosen for execution, probably on
the grounds of economy-is simply for a domed octagon,
Johann Dientzenhofer’s two alternative designs both envisaged
a domed central area thrusting outwards with a_ three-
dimensionally curved arch into two arms, to be met tangentially
by a similar arch-rib—Just as in the Sch6nborn mausoleum
chapel. In one design the central rotunda predominates, and the
concave-ended arms (cf. Banz) are clearly distinct; in the other
345
the result is more like a quatrefoil. In both designs Dientzen-
hofer placed the church at the pointed angle of the court-
vard — foreshadowing Schlaun’s similar design for the Brothers
Hospitaller at Munster. ]t is regrettable that these designs never
came to fruition. and all that was executed (1728—30) was
Neumann's plain octagon. Yet once he had recovered from the
first flush of architectural rectitude ensuing on his return from
Paris in ]723 (like Dientzenhofer’s after his return from Italv).
and having acquired the techniques of vault-construction from
Johann Dientzenhofer. Neumann continued to experiment with
and develop ideas of intersecting vaults and three-dimensional
arches.
Balthasar Neumann s career (]687—1] 753) isin many wavs the
most remarkable of any architect in Germany at this period.®
for he worked his way up from humble craft origins as the son
of a cloth-maker in Eger (Cheb. a free city in Bohemia) to
become the favourite architect of both the Schonborn prince-
bishops of Wirzburg, and the architectural consultant to every
prince in South Germany bar Bavaria. Not only this. he
designed the two most ambitious churches of the time-
Vierzehnheiligen and Neresheim—giving evidence in the de-
signs of a sophisticated mathematical intelligence unsurpassed
by any architect in Europe. Al] this he originally achieved by
pursuing the one carriére ouverte aux talents available to the
ambitious in the eighteenth century —the army —in which, as an
engineer. there was every opportunity to turn the mathematical
and planning skills acquired in fortification to civil architecture.
It is, significantly. a bastioned trace that Neumann holds in his
hand, whilst pointing to the Wurzburg Residenz, in Kleinert’s
portrait of 1727.
Neumann arrived in Wurzburg in 171] as a journeyman
cannon- and bell-founder who had already shown signs of
broadening his skills to cover waterworks as well. His pro-
fession brought him into contact with a man who perceived his
rare intellectual abilities. Engineer Muller, through whose
encouragement (and a remarkably enlightened series of loans
from the city fathers of Eger) he was enabled to renounce his
craft calling and study the theoretical basis of civil and military
architecture for four years, achieving a commission as an
artilleryman ensign in the Episcopal Bodyguard at the end of it
in 1714. For the next five years Neumann's career was largely
military. He was promoted captain. and took part in campaigns
in the Balkans and North Italy. But he also accompanied the
episcopal architect. the Vorarlberger carpenter Joseph Greis-
ing. on his tours of inspection. thus acquiring some practical
knowledge of architecture. As a result. when Johann Philipp
Franz von Schonborn was elected bishop of Wurzburg in 1719,
and Greising was too closely identified with the corrupt admin-
istration of his predecessor to be retained. Neumann was the
man that Schonborn chose to act as his architectura] aman-
uensis, so that he could hold his own against his brother and
uncle with their Baudirigierungsgétter. Neumann, in his turn,
at first had Johann Dientzenhofer at his elbow. to help him with
the practical side of building. of which he as yet had little. ifany.
experience. Though responsible for putting forward Johann
Philipp Franz’s ideas in the collaborative planning of the
Wiurzburg Residenz (as will be seen in the chapter on palace
architecture), Neumann's talents were soon recognized by
Lothar Franz and Friedrich Carl, who regretted only that he
lacked the sophistication that a year or two In Rome and Paris
would bring. In the event. once the overall plan for the palace
had been settled and building begun, Johann Philipp Franz did
Bohemia and Franconia 267
send Neumann to Paris for three months in 1723, both to get the
plans for the Residenz ‘corrected’ by de Cotte and Boffrand
(who himself came to Wurzburg the next vear). and to collect
ideas about or acquire what was up-to-date in decoration and
furnishings. Not long after he returned. however. in 1724.
Johann Philipp Franz died of a stroke. and his austere suc-
cessor, von Hutten. halted work on the palace. Neumann’s
reputation was already such that he found plentiful work
farther afield. both in the ecclesiastical sphere. as architect of
the church at Mtinsterschwarzach from 1727 onwards, and as
adviser to princes. at Mergentheim and Bruchsal. In 1729 von
Hutten and Lothar Franz von Schonborn died. and Friedrich
Carl von Schénborn succeeded to their sees of Wurzburg and
Bamberg. For the next fifteen years Neumann was his archi-
346 Banz, detail of the nave
tectural genius, in everything from the completion of the
Wirzburg Residenz to the design of parish churches with
constructed vaults, whilst at the same time travelling all over
South Germany to advise other princes on their palaces—and
on the knotty problem of staircases in particular. With the
death of Friedrich Carl in 1746, Neumann was dismissed by his
half-mad successor. von Ingelheim. This left him free to reach
the apogee of his career elsewhere. with the construction of the
Abbey Church of Neresheim. and the submission of a design for
rebuilding the Hofburg in Vienna — not executed. because of the
War, but for which he was rewarded with a golden snuff-box by
Maria Theresa. When von Greiffenklau succeeded to the see of
tnd
LA
268 Part 1V Central and Eastern Europe
Wurzburg in 1749 Neumann was reinstated as director of
building, whilst continuing his ubiquitous career as archi-
tectural consultant to the end of his life in 1753 — having lived
just long enough to see his bold ceiling over the staircase at
Wurzburg frescoed by Giambattista Tiepolo, and himself
included in the fresco — in the uniform of a colonel.
Neumann’s first independent church design was, as we have
seen, for the very staid priory church of Holzkirchen, built
shortly after his return from Paris. This conventionality per-
sisted in his first major church, that of the Benedictine Abbey of
Munsterschwarzach (1727-43). This Neumann designed as a
cruciform basilica with a full lanterned dome over the crossing,
and with tunnel vaults over the nave and choir divided into bays
by broad arch-bands springing from the paired columns below.
The church was demolished in 1837 after the suppression of the
abbey, but its appearance is recorded in an engraving. Its loss is
greatly to be regretted, as Neumann’s solemn architecture was
relieved by some of the earliest Rococo stucco by the Feicht-
mayr troupe, and above all by J.E. Holzer’s frescoes — the
masterpieces of this short-lived artist.
Properly to come into his own as an ecclesiastical architect,
however, Neumann required the stimulus of an informed
patron: in his case Friedrich Carl von Schénborn. Through
Friedrich Carl's direct authority as both bishop and ruler,
Neumann was to make designs not only for court chapels and
parish churches, but also for pilgrimage-churches as varied as
Gossweinstein, the Kappele and Vierzehnheiligen.
Gossweinstein (1730-36) was a Trinitarian pilgrimage, yet
Neumann turned his back on symbolic solutions like those once
projected by Johann Dientzenhofer, and created a gallery-less,
wall-pillar church with a transept. The facade of the church is a
flat, twin-towered screen, and the choir and the arms of the
transept are apsidal within but polygonal on the exterior. The
only unusual note is the shallow saucer dome pincered over
the crossing. The basic ordinariness of the design—though it
may be partially explicable, as later at Vierzehnheiligen, by
Friedrich Carl's desire to play down the ‘exotic’ aspect of
pilgrimages—also points to an ambivalence in Neumann him-
self. He frequently seems to have settled for relatively con-
ventional solutions, sometimes enlivened by experiment with
one particular feature, and only to have been stimulated to
produce his most exciting designs as the result of competitive
planning—as in the case of the court church at Wirz-
burg~having to cope with the unexpected—as at Vierzehn-
heiligen — or as the result of creative friction with his clients — as
at Neresheim.
lt was in the court church of the Wurzburg Residenz (built
1732-34, decorated and furnished 1735-44) that Neumann had
the courage to revert to the Dientzenhofer tradition of in-
tersecting vaults. After several migrations of position and
mutations in form from the time of the original plan of the
Residenz, it was at Neumann’s insistence that the church found
its ultimate site in the south-west corner, where it could rise to
the full height of the building, without—as Friedrich Carl
would have liked —having his apartments above. In the master-
plan that resulted from the conference in Vienna in September
1730, in which Hildebrandt played the leading role, the chapel
was planned with two domed bays and an apse behind the high
altar. In Hildebrandt’s revised designs of April 1731, this was
reduced to one dome flanked by tunnel-vaulting. Neumann
criticized the technical aspects of Hildebrandt’s vaults, and,
though promising to adhere to Hildebrandt’s plans, was in-
spired to produce his own first design, which was for a longi-
tudinal oval vault intersected by tunnel-vaulting on either
side—thus giving rise to single three-dimensional arch ribs at
the points of intersection. Elaborating further on this idea, in
1732 he came up with the final design of a longitudinal oval
vault intersecting with a transverse oval vault over the chancel
and over the vestibule on either side of it, further cut into by
fragments of vault over the windows between these, bounded
by three-dimensional arches representing the projection of the
ovals as conceived in plan. The slanting of the system of
supports below helps to make legible the succession of ovals,
which are, however, inter-penetrated by a secondary pair of
ovals adumbrated underneath the tangential three-dimensional
arches. The complexity of all this 1s by any reckoning consider-
able, and its legibility is impaired by the sharp horizontal
division into two zones, occasioned by Hildebrandt’s insertion
of a gallery, so treated that it runs above a heavy entablature
supported on free-standing marble columns, whilst above it
tapering pilasters support the vaults. Such a division into an
upper and a lower level is a customary feature of court chapels,
in order to allow the participation of spectators below in the
devotions of the prince in a /oge to the rear. In Friedrich Carl's
case, however, the rear gallery served for musicians, whilst that
at the other end gave access from his apartments to his own
invention (but inspired by pilgrimage-churches) of a second-
ary altar above the high altar for his private devotions. It was
also Hildebrandt who supphed the basic designs for the de-
coration and furnishings, laying down the refulgent harmonies
of dark marble and gilded stucco that proclaim this so strongly
as a court church. The stucco is the earliest surviving work in
the Residenz by the gifted Comasque Antonio Bossi, who, with
the ageing Swiss fresco-painter Johann Rudolf Byss, designed
most of the detail of the decoration.
Having taken the plunge with the court church at Wurzburg,
Neumann experimented with a variety of different vaults over
the next few years, further developing both the idea of inter-
penetrating vaults and that of a system of supports describing a
shape unrelated to that of the outer walls. The chapel of
Friedrich Carl's new summer seat at Werneck (planned 1734ff.,
finished 1744-45) was designed with an oval vault supported by
downward tapering pillars with round niches between, con-
tained within a trapezoid.
Friedrich Carl was especially keen on keeping parish chur-
ches in good repair, establishing a fund for the purpose,
employing Neumann as surveyor, and insisting where possible
on constructed vaults, and on the claims of structure to take
precedence over those of decoration. Most of the churches that
had to be rebuilt are devoid of artistic significance, but in two
(both built 1742-45), the bishop’s interest resulted in a special
effort by Neumann. The parish church at Gaibach was in the
village of one of the Sch6nborn’s family seats. Neumann
designed the church with a trefoil east end in such a way that the
domical vault over the crossing expanded out with a three-
dimensionally curved rib into the vaults of the arms, where it
encountered a similar rib tangentially —the very idea of Johann
Dientzenhofer’s for Holzkirchen on which Neumann’s design
had then turned its back. The parish church at Etwashausen
was the result of the Protestant refusal to contribute to the
repair of the ‘simultaneous church’ that they shared with the
Catholics there, and of Friedrich Carl's decision to build a fresh
church for the Catholics alone, dipping into his own pocket to
make sure that the church could hold its own. Characteristic-
——— ee
ally, as at Gaibach, he expressly stated that he saw no reason to
contribute to any interior embellishment. Etwashausen 1s
Latin-cross-shaped, and here it is the vaults of the arms that
take great bites out of the domical vault of the crossing. The
distinctive feature of the latter is that it is supported on paired
columns standing out from the angled corners, to which they
are attached by short sections of tunnel vault—a solution
which, making the main vault a kind of inner membrane, can
be paralleled in the Garden Saloon of the Wurzburg Residenz
(1744), and looks forward to the crossing-vault at Neresheim.
The most celebrated of the churches that Friedrich Carl got
Neumann to design was one on which the /ocus standi of both
Was Open to question, Vierzehnheiligen.°? This involved the
rebuilding of a church built over the spot where in 1445 a
shepherd had had a vision of the Christ child surrounded by
fourteen other children, later interpreted as the Fourteen Saints
in Time of Need. The church belonged to the Cistercian abbey
of Langheim, over which Friedrich Carl was ruler as bishop of
Bamberg, with whom the abbey had to share the proceeds of the
pilgrimage. This effectively gave Friedrich Carl a blocking
position over the proposals of a new abbot, Stephan Mosinger
(1734-51), to rebuild the church. He used this to reject designs
for the church made by the Protestant architect to the prince of
Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. G.H.Krohne, in 1739, and another
made by the Bamberg architect J.J. M. Kuchel in the winter of
1741-42 — both of which were decorative but relatively
cheap — and to impose instead the most orthodox of a number
of designs made by Neumann in 1742, ona Latin-cross plan and
providing for constructed vaults. The lack of intrinsic archi-
tectural interest in Neumann's chosen design makes it likely
that Friedrich Carl's grounds for rejecting those of Krohne and
Kiichel were liturgical and constructional, not aesthetic. On the
one hand, neither met his passionate insistence on fireproof
stone vaults, and on the other, whilst Krohne tucked the
Gnadenaltar (placed over the miraculous spot) away ina trefoil
choir and made inadequate provision for the circulation of
pilgrims, Kiichel made all too much-—placing the Gnadenaltar
in the middle of a central rotunda with entrances in the four
cardinal axes, to the exclusion of any normal! high altar at the
east end. Neumann’s plan placed the Gradenaltar in the centre
of the crossing-a solution like that employed in the late
mediaeval pilgrimage-church at Dettelbach nearby.
Friedrich Carl could not impose his own architect upon
Abbot MoOsinger, and when the foundation stone was laid for
the church to be built to Neumann’s plan in April 1743, Krohne
was the executant builder. When, however, Neumann and
Kiichel visited the site on a tour of inspection in December, they
found that Krohne was blithely departing from Neumann's
plans and carrying out some new design of his own that
truncated the choir, thus placing the Gradenaltar at the end of
the nave before the crossing, rather like the congregational altar
of some pre-Tridentine monastic church, with unbuttressed
walls that were clearly not intended to take a stone vault. To
appease Friedrich Carl. Abbot Mésinger hastily dismissed
Krohne, whilst Neumann set to work to produce a second set of
designs that would incorporate what had already been built.
347 Top right Vierzehnheiligen, plan of the pilgrimage-church, built by
Balthasar Neumann, (743ff.
348 Right Vierzehnheiligen, exterior of the pilgrimage-church
Bohemia and Franconia
269
347
306
270 Part 1V Central and Eastern Europe
taking account of the fact that the site of the Guadenaltar would
now have to be in the nave. Neumann's second set of designs
was ready when it was possible to start building again, in March
1744. In these he employed the device that he had used in the
court church at Wurzburg and that he had toyed with in his first
designs of Vierzehnheiligen, deploying a succession of oval
vaults—here one larger longitudinal oval vault between two
smaller ones—like an inner membrane on a system of supports
quite unrelated to the walls of the church. In a true stroke of
genius he also borrowed the old Dientzenhofer idea of synco-
pation, placing the largest oval vault so that it spanned not the
crossing, but the Gradenaltar in the eastern section of the nave.
As a result the three-dimensional arches marking the junctions
of the oval vaults fall over the crossing—where one would
normally expect a dome —and over the pseudo-crossing created
to balance this in the western section of the nave. At the same
time as sustaining the vaults, Neumann’s supports house aisles
and galleries between themselves and the outer walls, thus
permitting the circulation of pilgrims round the sides of the
Gnadenaltar ; the effect of all this, with light streaming in from
the broad windows in the walls behind, is diaphanous. whilst
any alteration in position on the part of the visitor throws the
spaces described by the supports into a new relation both with
one another and with the outer walls, creating disorienting yet
sumulating new vistas.
Friedrich Carl died tn 1746, thus severing Neumann’s con-
nection with the church. His place was taken by Kiichel, as
architect to the see of Bamberg, who faithfully carried out
Neumann's plans as far as the architecture was concerned,
whilst himself designing the free-standing Gnadenaltar— one of
the high points of Rococo construction — along the lines pro-
posed in his original plan of 1742. Building proceeded slowly.
and it was only in 1762/63 that the church was vaulted.
Through Kuchel, and perhaps because of the Bavarian origin of
the reigning bishop, Adam Friedrich von Seinsheim, the
Feichtmayr-Ubelhér troupe was employed to stucco the
church—its last major commission—round frescoes by the
itinerant Italian Giuseppe Appian. The decoration was only
completed, and the church consecrated, in 1772. There was thus
a full generation between the planning and the completion of
the church, and no necessary relation between the decoration
and the architecture as planned by Neumann (whose draughts-
manship was anyway always too poor for him to design
ornamental detail himself); yet the two complement one
another perfectly. Nor would anyone anticipate the interior
from the somewhat pedantic stone exterior of the church,
whose twin-towered fagade looks out over the valley of the
Main to~— appropriately — Banz on the other side.
Shortly after the death of Friedrich Carl, one of Neumann’s
consultative journeys in 1747 took him into Wiirttemberg,
where he met the abbot of Neresheim, who invited him to take
over the rebuilding of the church,”° for which preparatory work
had been in progress for the previous two years. Neumann was
Originally asked to produce a church modelled on the one he
had built for the Benedictine Abbey of Miinsterschwarzach,
and it seems likely that a design along these lines had already
been prepared by one of the monks who later became abbot,
Benedict Maria Angehrn. Neumann however insisted that this
should not be ‘just a church like another’, and between 1747
and 1750 produced a series of designs of varying degrees of
ambitiousness that progressively departed from the conven-
tional conception of a cruciform basilica. The abbots of
Neresheim had a special reason for falling in with the idea of a
distinctive church themselves, which was that they were aiming
at Reichsfretheit, which they finally achieved, emancipating
themselves from the suzerainty of the princes of Ottingen, in
1763.
In his earliest designs Neumann envisaged an aisled church
whose most singular feature was to be the set of three inter-
locking domes over the crossing and transepts. The first step to
the final design was taken when Neumann decided to support
the oval dome over the crossing on paired columns placed in
front of the piers — developing the baldachin effect that he had
employed at Etwashausen. The aisles of the nave and choir were
then reduced to narrow passages, and a pair of transverse oval
domes over the former and of round domes over the latter
added to those already planned for the crossing and transepts.
Finally, the domes over the choir were also converted into
transverse ovals. Neumann had thus arrived at both the ‘inner
membrane’ effect and the succession of oval domes employed in
the Wurzburg court church and Vierzehnheiligen, but the
domes are now side- rather than end-on to one another, save in
the crossing, thus preserving their integrity, in keeping with the
proto-Classical urge towards spatial clarity that has also been
noticed in J.M.Fischer’s late churches. This distinctness is
underlined by the design and setting of Martin Knoller’s
frescoes (1770-75), which are painted in feigned saucer domes
within the ovoid vaults./At Neresheim, as at Vierzehnheiligen,
the decoration considerably postdates the design of the church,
which was only vaulted in 1769-70. But in the case of Neres-
heim, this led to the church being given the kind of superficial
Classical garb relerred to by Germans as the Zopfsti/, after the
way of dressing men’s hair in a queue popular at the time. The
abbot was a great friend of Duke Carl Eugen of Wurttemberg,
who favoured the first stirrings of German Neo-Classicism,
whilst Knoller was one of the first artists working in South
Germany to have been influenced by Mengs in Rome. In a
349 Neresheim, plan of the abbey church built by Neumann, 1750ff.
treatise that he left he even states that he changed his manner
for ‘meinen lieben Neresheim’, and though his frescoes con-
tinue to use illusiontstic Baroque settings, their composition
and execution betray the new desire for clarity. The ornamental
parts of the vault were all painted under Knoller’s supervision
rather than stuccoed —itself an innovation in a church of this
size — whilst the stuccoing of the lower parts was carried
out —after an unfortunate experience with an inadequate Ital-
ian recommended by Knoller- by Thomas Schaidhauf from
the Stuttgart Academy. Yet though this decoration is not what
Neumann envisaged (he died in 1753), its cool and uncluttered
349
350
350 Neresheim, interior of the abbey church
appearance is not inimical to the increased lucidity of his
designs, but rather, by taking its place alongside churches with
full Rococo decoration. and others with none at all, expands
our way of looking at his architecture. The real betrayal of
Neumann's intentions occurred in the construction of the
vaults. Neumann had intended these to be of stone. His son's
twice-repeated offer to build them was turned down on the
grounds of his youth—though he was to become a brilliant
engineer. who pioneered new methods of solid vault-
construction. Instead, in 1759 the abbey decided to execute
them in lath-and-plaster. which meant both flattening them
and renouncing Neumann's intended lantern over the crossing.
Ironically, the vaults have given trouble ever since, and the
church has only just emerged from a nine-year campaign of
restoration, largely occasioned by the vulnerability of the vaults
to sonic booms.
With the death of Neumann the great tradition of Bohemian
and Franconian Baroque architecture came to an end. The
great church commissions were past—Langheim, which had
built Vierzehnheiligen, never rebuilt its own abbey church,
despite the plans that Neumann made for this, whilst Ebrach, in
a belated effort at modernization. contented itself with a bizarre
Zopfstil revetment of the interior of its Gothic abbey church in
stucco. Franz Ignaz Neumann had as great a_ technical
understanding of architecture as his father —if not greater — but
was never given the chance to employ it in original works.
Instead, he gave invaluable assistance in preserving and
completing the fabric of Mainz and Speyer Cathedrals,
displaying a sensitivity to Gothic that contrasts sharply with the
stucco-encrustation of Ebrach, and points to the dawn of
another age.
Palace architecture in the Empire
Frederick the Great of Prussia (writing in French as was his
wont), says of German princes in the Anri- Machiavel: ‘There 1s
not one of them. down to the youngest son of a youngest son
from an appanaged line. who does not preen himself upon some
resemblance to Louis XIV: he builds his Versailles; he has his
mistresses: he maintains his standing armies. Liselotte, the
Palatine wife of the duc d’Orleans, had already observed and re-
gretted the bedazzling effect of Paris and Versailles upon young
German royalty and nobility on their Grand Tour at the end of
the previous century. War with France, as Freschot observed,
had not prevented infatuation with ‘French galanterie and
French fashions... the antics of French dancing-masters and
all the little knick-knacks of French hairdressers’ from afflicting
even the Austrian capital. Montesquieu, indeed, perceived the
irony of the fact that it was only after the War of the Spanish
Succession, in which Louis XIV had had most of the princes of
the Empire ranged against him, that the contagion really took
hold: ‘Versailles has ruined all the princes of Germany, who are
now susceptible to the slightest subsidy. Who could have
foretold that the late king would have established the power of
France by building Versailles and Marly?
It is an over-simplification to maintain that the thorough-
going reconstruction of German palaces in the late-seventeenth
and early-eighteenth centuries was purely the result of such
emulation.”! Other factors played their part: the Thirty Years
War had already caused a hiatus in the normal process of
building and rebuilding, whilst in the Rhineland the French
themselves had been’ responsible for considerable
destruction—as the palace at Heidelberg still testifies—that
needed to be made good. There were also several princes who
had yet to descend from their mediaeval eyries into submissive
towns, like the prince-bishops of Wurzburg and Eichstatt, and
others who wished to move away from insubordinate towns, or
from the proximity of Free Cities not under their control, like
the elector palatine (who moved to Mannheim), the prince-
bishop of Cologne (who made his main palace at Brthl), and
the prince-bishop of Speyer (who created a new town and
palace at Bruchsal). But the form that the reconstructions and
new constructions took nonetheless clearly points to France as
the spur.
German princes frequently referred to Marly or the
Trianon—less often to Versailles itself—as their model, or
baptised their pavilions with French names— Mon Plaisir,
Solitude, Mon Bijou, Sans Souci—indicative of the source of
inspiration for such sophisticated retreats. Inside their palaces
planning was governed by the French concept of the apartment,
replacing the outmoded — but itself once French—idea of the
enfilade. The decoration and furnishing of these interiors was to
a significant extent designed and executed by French or French-
trained designers and craftsmen, and much was actually pro-
cured from France. Not only did the taste for intimate rooms
come from France, but also the original inspiration for ex-
quisite cabinets. decorated with mirrors or lacquerwork. Gar-
dens were always laid out in the French manner, often by
French gardeners: and frequently presiding over everything
were French architects, particularly in the little Protestant
principalities. because they had given refuge to the Huguenots
after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), and in the
Rhineland principalities, because of their proximity to France.
3)
272 Part 1V Central and Eastern Europe
Sometimes, as in the prince-bishoprics of Cologne and Wurz-
burg. there were Parisian architects~de Cotte, Boffrand, or
Oppenord-—sending plans or advice (and in Boftrand’s case,
actually visiting his clients in 1724). More usually, however,
there were their deputies—men like Guillaume Hauberat or
Michel Leveilly in Cologne—or simply Frenchmen eager to
make more challenging, also more precarious, careers outside
France — Nicolas de Pigage in the Palatinate, de la Guépiére the
Younger in Wtirttemberg, and Peyre the Younger in Trier.
Nearly all of them added ‘de’ to their names, in accordance with
the unspoken law that every Frenchman abroad was an aristoc-
rat, whilst some invented new names for themselves altogether:
d‘Ixnard to conceal his humble craft origin —his real name was
probably Michel—and Louis-Remy de la Fosse (Nicolas Lero-
uge) for some reason unknown, La Frise du Parquet, the
architect to Speyer. almost sounds as if he was making fun of
the whole convention! Their employers generally had first-hand
experience of French architecture from the ‘Kavalierstour’—the
German equivalent of the Englishman's Grand Tour. In ad-
dition, they enjoyed the advice of a new breed of dilettante
architect-ofiical—the ‘Kavalierarchitekten’—whose _ training
and orientation was similarly French. The von Zochas at
Ansbach were gentlemen-architects of this kind, and there was
a particularly strong concentration of them at the courts of the
Schénborns-— the Barons von Erthal and von Rotenhan, and
the von Ritter zu Groenesteyn brothers.’* As has been ex-
plained in a previous section (see pp.172 and 175), their
professional architects, when they were not of foreign origin,
were also of higher social standing than the mason-architects
employed on ecclesiastical commissions, almost invariably
having officer status as military engineers (a profession that was
iiself set upon a new footing by the French).
This strong French inclination of German palace archi-
tecture means that there ts often little that is specifically
Baroque about it, particularly in the north, where the academic
and classicizing strain in French architecture was reinforced by
the resort to Dutch, and even English, models.73 The Rococo
decoration of interiors was of course, as the example of
Palladian houses in England bears out, independent of the
orientation of the architecture. Yet there were three factors
influencing German palace architecture in a more Baroque
direction. The first of these — the sheer continued preference for
grandeur over intimate comfort—sustained the other two: the
enduring influence of Italy and Italian architects, and the
inclination towards Vienna of (particularly the episcopal)
German courts. Sometimes French and Austrian/Italian
influences met head-on—as in the remarkable Opera House at
Bayreuth (1746-48), whose facade is an academic French
exercise by Joseph Saint-Pierre, whilst the auditorium, by
Giuseppe and Carlo Galli-Bibiena, 1s strongly tndebted to
designs for a new Viennese Opera House by Francesco Galli-
Bibiena of 1704.
The instructions given to Tessin the Younger over the design
of a chateau at Roissy-en-France for the president de Mesmes
just before 1700 already reveal a northern architect being
instructed in the growing French aversion to vast public rooms.
At one point, for instance, he is told: “There is absolutely no call
for a Sa/on—it occupies half the house, and no one ever goes
there’. By the time that L.C.Sturm published his Vol/standige
Anweisung Grosser Herren Pallaste...nach dem heutigen Gusto
schon und prachtig anzugeben 10 1718, 1t was his opinion-with
his gaze fixed upon France —that “Not so many Grand Saloons
are made now as previously, nor are they required to be so
vastly big as before’. The contrary had, however, been
demonstrated at—for instance—Ludwigsburg and Pommers-
felden just before he wrote, and was to persist in both the
palaces of the Austrian capital—e.g. the Upper Belvedere—and
those of the princes of the Empire.
In the section dealing with France (see above pp.106—142)
Christopher Tadgell has explained that it was less that France
witnessed a move away from great state apartments than that
there was for a time a lack of royal commissions to engender
them. In France, as Liselotte had to explain to her German half-
sisters, there was only one ‘Hof’, or Court—that of the
king—requiring the full hierarchy of state and private apart-
ments. In Germany, not only were there innumerable dynasties,
fragmented into more than one line, each with its own court,
but there might also be, within these, a dowager or a brother
with a court—and thus a palace or palaces—of his or her own.
The ceremonial of German courts, all of which took their cue
from Vienna—where indeed the expression ‘etiquette’ seems to
have been invented — was more formal than that of France, and
encouraged a greater number of rooms for the nice observance
of distinctions in treatment of courtiers and guests.”+ In ad-
dition, much more was made of the Festsaal (often called the
Kaisersaal, when its decoration paid homage to the prince’s
ultimate overlord), for great occasions, and much greater
attention was paid to the staircase, which had a crucial role to
play in the reception of a guest —- both in impressing him from
the moment of his arrival, and in defining his position relative to
his host, according to where the latter awaited or came to meet
him. German punctiliousness over etiquette was at its most
acute in Ratisbon (Regensburg), where the business of the
perpetual imperial diet could be held up for months at a time
over unresolvable tssues of precedence. The English dramatist,
Sir George Etherege, who was envoy there between 1685 and
1689, was an alternately amused and exasperated observer of
this, claiming that:
The Plague of Ceremony infects
Ev'n in Love the softer Sex:
Who an essential will neglect
Rather than lose the least respect.
With regular approach we storm
And never visit but in form:
That 1s, sending to know before
At what a Clock they'll play the Whore.
Whilst Lady Mary Wortley Montagu observed, when she
passed through on her way to join her husband in his embassy
at Constantinople in 1716, and having failed to enter into any
disputes over precedence: “I begun to think my selfe ill-natur’d
to offer to take from ’em, in a Town where there is so few
diversions, so entertaining an Amusement. | know that my
peaceable disposition allready gives mea very ill figure, and that
‘tis publickly whisper’d as a piece of impertinent pride in me
that I have hitherto been saucily civil to every body, as if |
thought no body good enough to quarrel with’. This fine sense
of social distinction and precedence is reflected in Sturm’s
discussion of apartments: he not only distinguishes between the
351 Opposite Bayreuth, Opera House auditorium by Giuseppe and Carlo
Galli-Bibiena, 1746-48
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370
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4)
number of rooms and anterooms appropriate to the palaces of
respectively a great lord, a ruling prince, and a king (remarking
in an aside that the contemporary enlargement of princely
households required the addition of yet another antechamber),
and calls for at least eight sets of apartments in the palace of a
ruling prince, but he also says the apartments for guests “must
be laid out with hierarchically diminishing space and comfort,
so that one is never at a loss to lodge the persons of Princes
commodiously. yet with due regard to their station’.
A most distinctive feature of German palaces was the ‘core’
arrangement of the key areas—vestibule, sa/a terrena or garden
room, ceremonial staircase, and great saloon—in the centre of
the palace, above and alongside one another. This ‘core’
arrangement was first adumbrated at the Brunswick-Wolfen-
bittel Lustschloss of Salzdahlum (by J.B. Lauterbach and
Hermann Korb, 1688-94), and received one of its most suc-
cessful formulations at Pommersfelden.’> Boffrand pro-
fessed himself lost in admiration when he visited this Schloss
in 1724, particularly on account of the stairs and the great
saloon, freely confessing that there was nothing comparable
to these in France. Another un-French feature that he did
not specifically remark on at Pommersfelden, but which formed
part of the above mentioned core, was the sala terrena. As the
rock- and shell-work, or illusionistically painted ‘ruin’ de-
coration of these betrays, they were derived from the grotto.
Their singularity was that —1n a tradition going back to Sustris's
Grotto Loggia in the Munich Residenz (1581-6) and Solart's
grotto under the Salzburg archbishops’ suburban retreat at
Hellbrunn (16]3—15)—they were not isolated features in the
grounds, like the Grotto of Thetis at Versailles (which, signi-
ficantly, was already dismantled in Louis XIV’s lifetime), but
integral with the palace. forming a hinge between without and
within, ‘Nature’ and “Architecture.
Over and above the taste both for summer palaces and for
small informal buildings and pavilions in the parks of, or yet
farther away from. the main palaces, fostered by Louis XIV's
Marly and Trianon, German princes favoured two especial
types of retreat—the hermitage and the hunting lodge. Her-
mitages were a religious sub-species of the grotto. also de-
corated with ‘natural’ materials, and sometimes simulating a
ruin, in which princes could either play at or live out in earnest
for a brief period the austere hfe of the hermit. The Jagd-
schloss or hunting lodge—which might be a pheasant shooting
box, as in the case of the Amalienburg; a place for heronry, like
Falkenlust: or a centre for stag-hunting, like Clemenswerth
—embodied the escape from the constricting etiquette of the
palace household in a form particularly congenial to the
Nimrod-like princes of the Empire (Montesquieu went so far as
to claim that at one time certain of them used to measure their
might by the number, not of their subjects, but of their stags!).
Such buildings, precisely because they were for informal use
and small, allowed the architect the greatest licence; whilst the
expression of their purpose in the decoration of their interiors
allowed the German aptitude for combining fantasy and nature
in ornament free play; they are among the most successful and
352 Opposite Nymphenburg (Munich), the Amalienburg, alcove in Yellow
Room designed by Cuvilliés, decoration by J. B. Zimmermann and
Joachim Dietrich, 1734-39
353 Right Mannheim, engraving of the Residenz, probably designed by
Louts-Remy de la Fosse, begun 1720
Palace architecture in the Empire 275
appealing products of the German Baroque. Of other
features —‘ruins’, ‘Chinese’ or ‘Indian’ pavilions, open-air thea-
tres, bath-houses, and the like—many of which were common
to Europe as a whole in this period, it 1s only necessary to single
out one: the frequently hemicyclic orangery that so often closed
one prospect of a Schloss, because in a famous case -—the
Zwinger at Dresden -—this evolved into a unique building in its
own right.
The intimate relation between the architecture and the life of
a court was itself an inducement to princes to take a more active
part in the planning of their buildings than other kinds of client
in theirs, and was manifested 1n such ways as the Schonborns’
insistence upon the creation of lower mezzanine floors to house
their domestics, in keeping with Italian and Viennese practice,
but contrary to French ideas of seemliness. When it came to the
ceremonial staircase, for which again the models were more
often sought in Italy than France. and in which—as Sturm
contemptuously observed-inventiveness was more highly
prized than was ‘correctness’ elsewhere in the palace, the client
might essentially design his own, as Lothar Franz von Schon-
born did at Pommersfelden. But the involvement of clients
sometimes extended to more than the design. or insistence upon
the incorporation. of particular features. Several took pleasure
in designing their own buildings. In the case of Frederick the
Great of Prussia, this is notorious, for the whole career of the
aristocratic ex-officer architect. Georg Wenzeslaus von
Knobelsdorff (1699-1753), depended upon his collaboration
with the king. from their first association in the design of the
Temple of Apollo at Neu-Ruppin (1733), to its culmination and
breakdown in the construction of Sanssouci (1745-47), when
the king insisted upon the omission of a basement against the
advice of his architect. A training in drawing and in the classical
vocabulary of architecture formed a customary part of the
education of princes at this period, but this did not necessarily
result in a competence in architectural] draughtsmanship. Fred-
erick the Great contented himself with rough sketches and
indications, which he expected his architect to work up into a
realizable building: Augustus the Strong of Saxony and Poland
(1694-1733) on the other hand. produced detailed architectural
drawings of his projects, which were then ‘corrected’ by one of
his team of architects. Klengel had been his tutor, as Fischer
von Erlach had been Joseph of Austria's and Chambers was to
be George ITI’s. Augustus the Strong also made a number of
ideal designs, in which he showed a strong predilection for the
central plan. Max Emanuel of Bavaria claimed during his exile
that the only things capable of diverting him from his mel-
.
=. -
>
354
276 Part 1V Central and Eastern Europe
ancholy were ‘des maisons de campagne, des Jardins...des
ajustements, meubles, et pareille chose’, and that ‘1 couldn't
exist without making designs. I form an idea of the sites, and
thereupon I draw and make plans... being quite content to
have scribbled away without regard to execution... the mere
thought of a future building gives me pleasure when I look at
my drawings’.
All princes took a keen interest in interior decoration and
furnishings, since in these, as in their clothes, ballets, and
firework-displays, they were intent upon being abreast of the
latest French fashions. No prince attempted to design interiors
himself — but in two famous cases women did so. These were the
Dowager Margravine Sibylla Augusta of Baden-Baden
(1675-1733) and Frederick the Great's sister the Margravine
354 Schloss Favorite, Rastatt, interior designed by the Dowager
Margravine Sibylla Augusta of Baden-Baden, 171 {-29
Wilhelmine of Bayreuth (1709~58), whose feminine skills and
independence of character led them to design interiors, mn the
Favorite near Rastatt (1711-29), and the Neues Schloss at
Bayreuth (1754-58), that are a genre apart within the German
Baroque and Rococo. The remarkably various and fragmented
picture that German palace architecture presents 1s not a little
due to the role played by the dilettante passion for architecture
of such a plethora of sovereigns.
The domination of Italians was most marked in the south of
the Empire at the beginning of our period; in the Protestant
courts of the north and in Westphalia, Netherlanders and
Scandinavians like Philipp de Chieze and Peter Pictorius were
more in evidence, establishing a sober classicism that was taken
up by their German pupils and successors — men such as Johann
Arnold Nering (1659-95) in Prussia and the theorist
L.C. Sturm (1669-1719) in Brunswick and Schwerin. Only in
Saxony in the north did Wolf Caspar von Klengel (1630-91)
introduce a more Baroque note, as the result of his first-hand
experience of Italy in the years 1651-55. The consequence of the
hegemony of the Italians in the south was~—since innovations in
layout and planning no longer stemmed from Italy, but from
France —that the earliest palaces were decidedly old-fashioned.
Barelli’s villa-type Lusthaus at Nymphenburg (1664ff) for the
Elector Ferdinand Maria of Bavaria’s wife Henriette Adelaide
of Savoy was originally a plain, five-storeyed cube with mono-
tonous fenestration. Antonio Petrinrs (1624-1701) country
Schloss for the prince-bishop of Bamberg, the Marquardsburg
or Seehof (1687-95) is a quadrangular building with corner-
towers modelled on Georg Ridinger’s Schloss at Aschaffen-
burg, put up at the beginning of the century. A quadrangular
layout was also originally intended by Zuccalli both for the
Elector Max Emanuel of Bavaria’s country Schloss at
Schleissheim near Munich (planned 1693 onwards, founda-
tions laid ] 701), and for his brother the Elector Joseph Clemens
of Cologne’s Residence at Bonn (!st campaign 1695-1702). The
War of the Spanish Succession and the consequent exile of the
two electors in France, however, put a stop to both these
projects, and when they were resumed, it was to plans con-
siderably modified by the French architects—most notably
Robert de Cotte—whom the brothers had consorted with
during their exile, and with French or French-trained architects
directing their construction and decoration. Before continuing
with the account of these palaces however, it 1s necessary to
speak of what was being built in the meantime in other states of
the Empire that did not suffer from interregna caused by the
war.
These years when the emperor, already indebted for the
Relief of Vienna (1683) and the final annihilation of the Turkish
threat to his satellite princes,was now in league with most of them
against France, were also the years in which the prestige of the
architecture of the imperial capital and its outposts began to
spread, spurring on the electors of Brandenburg and Saxony to
create appropriate settings for their new-found royalty, as kings
of Prussia and Poland respectively, and inspiring other princes
to found new residences whose idiom and aspirations were
imperial, even when the model for their layout was Versailles.
Two whose plans were so ambitious that neither approached
realization, were the Residence planned by the Venetian Count
Matteo Alberti for Jan Willem, the elector Palatine, to replace
the devastated castle at Heidelberg (1697), and Lours-Remy de
la Fosse’s plans for a new Residence for the Landgraf of Hesse-
Darmstadt (1715ff). Both of them aspired to house the emperor
and all eight electors (though the latter made provision for the
landgraf’s hopes of becoming the ninth), and in the new
Palatine Residence the symbolically octagonal staircase alone
was to be 225 feet high and 125 feet wide, and adorned by 158
statues. Ultimately, a new Palatine Residence of at any rate
colossal length—almost 1500 feet— was built by Jan Willem’s
successor Carl Philipp onto the new town of Mannheim
(1720ff.), owing to a dispute with the citizens of Heidelberg. It is
thought that the plans for this too were supplied by de la Fosse,
though their execution between 1720 and 1731 lay in the
successive hands of the Mainz architect Johann Kaspar Her-
warthel, the Speyer architect Johann Clemens Froimont, and
the de Cotte protégé formerly at Cologne, Guillaume Haub-
erat, with subsequent additions of an Opera-House (1741-42)
by Alessandro Galli-Bibiena, and interiors—including the
famous Library, destroyed with the rest of the (now rebuilt)
Residence in the last war—by Nicolas de Pigage (1752ff). In all
three of these residences, projected and realized, the monu-
mental treatment evokes Fischer von Erlach’s designs for
358
Le
thi
Sché6nbrunn, whilst the detailing of the exteriors — despite the
almost exclusive involvement of Frenchmen at Mannheim ~ Is
indebted to Italy rather than France. In one respect. however,
they all took after Versailles, and that was in the creation of a
cour Qhonneur in {front of the palace. This was also the case with
the first of all the wholly new residences to be built in South
Germany, Rastatt, even though here the architect, D.E. Rossi,
was an Italian who had been working in Vienna. It was begun as
a Jagdschloss in 1697, and redesigned as a residence, with a
planned town associated, in 1700.7° In other respects, however.
Rastatt clearly betrays the Italian provenance of its architect
and the orientation towards Vienna of the man for whom it was
built—"Turkenlouis, the margrave of Baden-Baden. When
announcing his new designs to the margrave. and making
special mention of the ‘core’ arrangement of the sa/a terrena,
twin stairs, vestibule and saloon, Rossi assured him that they
were ‘of such a Sinitri and Magnificentza...that no better
could be found of these dimensions...] am prepared to stake
my life on it that. if realized. the whole world will approve. and
say that it is one of the finest buildings not justin Germany, but
in Italy even’. 1t is significant that, whilst the thoughts of the
Catholic margrave of Baden-Baden and his architect were on
Italy and Vienna, those of his Protestant kinsman, the mar-
grave of Baden-Durlach. who was soon emploving Rossi's
more tractable foreman, Giovanni Mazza. without reference to
Rossi, were on Tessin the Younger’s New Palace at Stockholm
(1697ff), which we also know to have been taken as a model by
the Protestant ruler of Prussia for his new Sci/oss in Berlin.
Since Tessin’s main source of inspiration was Bernini's plans
for the Louvre. the ultimate orientation towards the Baroque
models of Italy was the same, but it is illuminating that the
choice of exemplar was dictated by political and religious
affiliation.
Rastatt in turn served as a model for another Jagd/usthaus
converted into a_ residence, with a planned town
attached-Ludwigsburg (1707ff), built by Duke Eberhard
Ludwig of Wurttemberg for himself and his notorious mistress.
Wilhelmine von Gravenitz. turning his back on his lawful wife
355 Below left Bayreuth, Neues Schloss, Walnul Gallery. with panelling
and parquet by Johann Spindler, and carving by F. I. Dorsch
336 Above Ludwigsburg, aenal view of the palace. orginally designed as a
hunting Jodge by P. J. Jenisch, 1704, and added Io by J. F. Nettle, followed
by D. G. Frisoni until 1733
and ancestral palace in Stuttgart.’’ The hunting lodge at
Ludwigsburg was designed by the Stuttgart theologian and
mathematician P.J.Jenisch, but for its conversion into a full-
scale palace in 1707 the duke turned to a military engineer of
unknown training, Johann Friedrich Nette (1672-1714). The
sources of Nette’s architecture, and the fact that in 1709 he went
to Prague to recruit craftsmen — chiefly Italians —to make up for
the deficiencies in local talent, are sufficiently indicative of links
with the Habsburg crownlands. Moreover, whilst taking the
idea of a cour dhonneur over from Rastatt, he exploited the
ground falling away on the opposite side to create a quite
Italian terraced garden, in keeping with the Italian detailing of
his corps-de-logis. On his death in 1714, the duke appointed one of
those whom he had recruited in Prague, the Comasque stuccador
Donato Giuseppe Frisoni (1683-1735) to succeed him as archi-
tect, over the protests of his officials, who only wanted to
recognize this mere craftsman as an /ngenieur, or designer.
Frisoni continued to add to the complex of buildings—most
interestingly in the trefoil-shaped court church — and it was he
who, when all these additions still left the court short of living
accommodation, had the ingenious idea of closing the cour
d'honneur with a second corps-de-logis, placing it over an
awkward fall in the land (1725—33). The lavish decoration of the
interiors with stucco and illusionistic frescoes was entirely
executed by Comasques in the modes usual in Austria and
Bohemia. Frisoni also designed a more intimate retreat called
the Favorita (1715-19) on the hill opposite the orginal corps-
de-logis, with a virtuoso external staircase in the same spirit as
that on the similarly-named building of the Bohemtan-born
dowager margravine of Baden-Baden and those in Bohemia
itself. Ludwigsburg was the last major palace to be built and
decorated by Italians in this Austro-Bohemian manner:
Frisoni’s executant builder was his nephew, Paolo Retti, and it
is symptomatic of the change in taste that, when the interior
completion of the residence at Ansbach was entrusted to his
kinsman Leopoldo Retti between 1734 and 1745 (it had been
rebuilt in successive stages by Gabrieli de’ Gabrieli, a
Graubundener from Vienna, from 1705-15; by the two von
Zocha brothers, from 1716-30: and by Retti himself from 1731
357
278 Part 1V Central and Eastern Europe
onwards), he sought craftsmen who could work in the new
French-based Rococo manner from Bonn and Munich.
In the two major northern courts of Brandenburg-Prussia
and Saxony-Poland there was meanwhile a brief Baroque
interlude, before French-oriented academic taste—replacing the
earlier adherence to Dutch classicism—was imposed by a group
of French émigrés and their adherents, two of whom—Jean de
Bodt (1670-1745) and Zacharias Longuelune (1669—
1748) — pursued their careers in both kingdoms.
In Berlin this interlude was represented by the career of
Andreas Schliter (c. 1660—1714).78 Schliter was a sculptor of
unknown ortgin, who arrived in Berlin from Warsaw in 1694.
His career as an architect started on the Arsenal, a building
probably designed by the French academic architect Francois
Blondel, and begun by Nering in the year of his death (1695). In
1696 Schluter was commissioned to carve over a hundred
keystones for this building, exploiting the opportunity and the
martial connotations of the project to include a whole series of
dying warriors, instead of the grimacing masks and old men
more usual in such a location. This led to his employment as
architect of the fabric as well, which allowed him to increase the
sculptural component. In 1699 he forfeited the architectural
direction of the building to Jean de Bodt, on account of the first
of several collapses that dogged—and ultimately ruined —his
career as an architect; Berlin was built upon reclaimed marsh-
land, and this and the lack of skilled and experienced craftsmen
in the mushroom city were doubtless responsible for his misfor-
tunes, since his Bernini-like role as not only sculptor and
architect, but also artistic overseer, must have overtaxed his
powers of supervision. Nonetheless, Schliter continued to
supervise the reconstruction of the Stadtschloss, with which he
had been entrusted in 1698, preparatory to the Elector Fred-
erick IIIs elevation to be king as Frederick I. A number of
factors—piety towards the old Schloss of the Great Elector,
the influence of Tessin’s new palace at Stockholm (1697ff) and.
beyond that, of Bernini's designs for the Louvre—led to the
retention of a quadrangular layout, but in the elevations, and
above all in the interiors, Schliitter revealed a remarkable gift for
the sculptural conception of both structure and decoration. The
politically motivated destruction of this war-damaged Schloss
in 1950 was one of the most regrettable losses in the aftermath
of the war. Faulty construction led to cracks in this fabric, too,
finally becoming Schliiter’s undoing when it came to the
erection of a water-tower at the north-west corner of the palace,
called the Munzturm from its proximity to the Mint (1702-06).
This was a remarkably imaginative structure, like an openwork
belfry over a rockwork fountain base, but overloading of the
old foundations threatened imminent collapse, which Schliiter
forestalled by taking the tower down. In disgrace with the
court, Schliter nonetheless went on to build a house with an
undulating, strikingly astylar fagade for Ernst von Kamecke
(17]1—12). The succession of the thrifty Frederick William | in
1713 led, however, to the drying-up of all significant archi-
tectural patronage, and in the next year Schlitter left to try his
fortune at the court of Peter the Great of Russia, only to die
shortly after his arrival. Schltiter’s rivals, de Bodt—who con-
centrated increasingly on his military career—and the Swede
Eosander von Gothe—whose most notable work was the
extension of Nering’s palace of Charlottenburg (1701-12), and
the addition to this of a dome (a Baroque feature out of keeping
with the sobriety of the architecture beneath, probably insisted
upon by Frederick J) — meanwhile held the field It is a pointer to
the future that, before undertaking the work at Charlottenburg,
Eosander was sent on a study tour to Paris; the results show
that he was impressed by the extended Versailles. Under
Frederick William I, however, Eosander, de Bodt, and de
Bodt’s former assistant, Longuelune, all left Prussian employ,
ultimately for that of Saxony, where, in the later 1720s, they
began to carry through an academic reaction against the
Baroque of the preceding years.
The Baroque strain in Saxon architecture had a long genesis,
and is by general consent traceable back to the palace in the
Grosser Garten at Dresden (1679-83), raised by Klengel’s
successor Johann Georg Starcke (c. 1640-95) on the basis of a
sketch by the crown prince. This H-shaped building included
motifs from sixteenth-century French architecture in a strongly
sculptural treatment of the exterior, with a pair of outdoor
staircases filling the hollows of the H. The Elector Augustus the
Strong, who unexpectedly succeeded his elder brother Johann
Georg IV in 1694, and was elected king of Poland in 1697, had
not been brought up to rule. Instead, he had travelled widely
and had become a votary, not just of the more carnal pleasures
(he ate prodigiously, and the margravine of Bayreuth calcu-
lated that he sired 354 illegitimate children), but of the more
refined, if profligate, ones of operas, pageants, ceremonial
camps, and architecture.’”? Of the latter he himself wrote to
Count Wackerbarth, his superintendent of buildings (1695-
1728) in 1711, making quite clear his attitude to the role of his
architects: *... so We, from Our special love of the art of
building, wherein We are particularly wont to amuse Ourselves,
have before now Ourselves invented various designs, put them
down on paper, and ordered Our architects in Our own Person
to put them into complete execution...and have reserved the
fina] say once and for all to Ourselves as Master’. The architects
with whom he chiefly chose to work as his instruments in this
way were, first of all, Marcus Conrad Dietze, a sculptor and
draughtsman, whose lively designs for the rebuilding of the
Schloss at Dresden were never realized because of war, and his
death in a fire in 1704, and Matthaus Daniel Poppelmann.*°
Poppelmann arrived in Dresden from Herford in about 1680,
and proceeded to acquire his architectural knowledge in the
electoral office of works—the first German architect to have
what can be called a professional training. Appointed
Baukonduk teur — draughtsman and surveyor — in 1691, his crea-
tive opportunity did not come until he succeeded Dietze at the
357 Berlin, Roya! Palace, rebuill t698ff. by Andreas Schliter (destroyed
1950)
358
i eee
Titty
358 Dresden, the Zwinger by Matthaiis Daniel Poppelmann, 1709ff. in a
painting by Bellotto. Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen
age of forty-two in 1704. The Elbe wing of the Schloss at
Dresden had burnt down in 1701, whereupon Dietze had been
sent to Italy for two years to gather ideas for a total recon-
struction of the whole Sc/i/oss, on the plans for which he had
been working since his return in 1703 (Augustus had also
written to Berlin to ask for Schliter’s plans for the Sch/loss
there. to provide ideas). Sufficient funds never became available
to realize the intended palace, for which Poppelmann also made
a whole series of designs between 1704 and 1718; instead, what
was at first intended as a mere appendage to the reconstructed
Schloss, the Zwinger-Garten, took shape as a building in its
own right.®?
The Zwinger takes tts name from the dry moat between two
ramparts in which wild animals were very often kept. It was in
such a sheltered location that in 1709 Augustus the Strong
decided to place his orangery, and made a rough sketch of his
intentions, which soon became more ambitious. The next year
P6ppelmann was sent to Vienna and Rome ‘to examine the
current manner of constructing both palaces and gardens, but
in particular to consult with the outstanding architects and
artists over the designs entrusted to him of the present palace’.
Augustus the Strong, who recovered Poland tn 1710 through
the defeat of Charles X11 of Sweden at Pultawa the year before,
and who was to be made vicar of the Empire in 1711, had the
strongest political reasons for pressing ahead with his ambitious
plans for splendid representational palaces in both Dresden and
Warsaw: nevertheless. neither of these was ever built as he
intended, and the history of the Zwinger seems to show that he
somehow realized that he had found a project that was not
only—even if it exceeded his purse—within the limits of his
ercdit, but also peculiarly apt as a built memorial to his reign. As
Augustus wrote to his son in 1719, ‘Princes win immortality
through great buildings as well as great victories’. His own
martial career had been inglorious, and the Zwinger is instead a
permanent embodiment of his creations in the other field in
which he yearned to excel—the truly Baroque one of festivals,
pageants, processions and tournaments. It is like a petrifaction
of the pavilions and grandstands put up for the spectacles
created to celebrate the upturn in Augustus’s fortunes and the
visit of the king of Denmark in 1709. For the Zwinger steadily
evolved: from being a simple orangery framing a garden, it
became an orangery enclosing an arena for spectacles, to which
its galleries and pavilions could serve as the stands; in 1718 it
was accepted that the rebuilding of the Sci/oss would have to be
postponed indefinitely, the Zwinger was recognized as a
building in its own right, it was decided to repeat symmetrically
on the south-east what had already been built on the north-
west, and the work was pressed on frantically in order to be
ready for the crowning festivities of Augustus the Strong's
career—those celebrating the marriage of the crown prince to
the emperor's daughter in 1719: finally, in 1728 began the
installation of the king’s library and all his collections bar those
of his works of art.
Yet all this had been foreseen by P6ppelmann almost from
the first. One of the things that he acquired when he was in
Rome was Carlo Fontana’s engraved reconstruction of the
Campus Martius, and in the prefatory inscription to his
publication of a set of engravings of the Zwinger in 1729, he
implied that this had been his inspiration all along: “Just as
indeed the Ancient Romans, amongst their other astonishing
structures, also used to build such huge public buildings for
show and amusement that these took up a vast area. and
incorporated yet other buildings, such as race-courses. fencing-
quintain- hunting- and animal-baiting rings, stages, covered-
and open-air walks, colonnades, forecourts, public dance- and
assembly-halls, baths, dining-rooms, cabinets of curiosities,
libraries, temporary stands, triumphal arches, tiered seats for
operas and plays, waterworks, gardens and the like — but above
all a long round-ended Schau-Burg or arena, for victory-
carnival- and state-parties...so the fabric of this royal so-
called Zwinger-garden is so cunningly laid out that 1t embraces
all the above-mentioned things.’
The buildings that Péppelmann created for the Zwinger
show that he had been impressed above all by Viennese archi-
tecture—at the time of his visit Hildebrandt was creating the
gardens and orangery of the Schénborn garden palace — by its
fusion of sculpture and ornament with architecture, by its
delight in stairs, and in convexity and concavity. Other features
show that he had absorbed the lessons of French masons de
plaisance like the Trianon (he had visited France in 1715), and
had been impressed by designs as various as the gardens of
Frascati and that for an orangery in Paul Decker’s Fiirstlicher
Baumeister (which had come out in 1711, a copy being tmmedi-
ately acquired by Augustus the Strong). Most memorable is the
contrast between the low, regular, and flat-roofed galleries and
the fanciful, highly sculptural gates and pavilions projecting
from these. Here a crucial contribution is made by the carving
of the Salzburg-born sculptor Balthasar Permoser. This is rich
280 Part 1V Central and Eastern Europe
with symbolism that plays on the three themes of Nature, the
Gods, and the State. Crowning the masterpiece of the whole
ensemble, the Wallpavillon (1716-18), which is honeycombed
with stairs within and without, is Hercules supporting the
globe, at one and the same time an allusion to the political
responsibilities of Augustus the Strong, and to his escape from
these into pleasure-grounds encompassed by an orangery—like
Hercules in the Garden of the Hesperides.
None of Péppelmann’s other executed buildings have the
exciting qualities of the Zwinger: before the liberating experi-
ence of his journey to Vienna and Italy he was too staid, and
during and after its construction — on such projects as the Elbe-
side Schloss Pillnitz (1720-24, noteworthy for its ‘Chinese’
roofs), and the conversion of the Hollandisches Palais into a
‘Japanese Palace’ of porcelain (1728ff)—he was inhibited by
collaboration with other architects like Longuelune and de
Bodt. After the death of Augustus the Strong and the suc-
cession of Augustus III in 1733 the latter held sway with the
‘correct’, chaste, and academic manner. The new Baureglement
of the reign was simply parroting a previous memorial of de
Bodt’s when it stated: ‘In future, we want efforts to be made to
see that there is something nob/e in all details and features of a
building, and that there is nothing excessive, and even less,
contrived and unsuitable. about the decoration and
ornament... that the architecture is not oppressed or obscured
by the ornament applied... We believe that in this way two-
thirds to three-quarters of the carving and sculpture that up till
now has been applied here, there, and everywhere, can be
dispensed with’. Designs for the completion of the north side of
Péppelmann’s Zwinger (ultimately filled by Semper’s Picture
Gallery) show how little sympathy remained for his approach.
The surviving elements of the Baroque tradition in Saxony
(which, it should be remembered, was the country of Winckel-
mann) were only to be found in church architecture, notably in
the Protestant Frauenkirche (1726-43) by the carpenter-
359 Paul Decker, engraving of a design for a royat palace from Ihe
Firstlicher Baumeister, 171]
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architect Georg Bahr (1666-1738), and in the rival Catholic
Hofkirche (1738ff) by Gaetano Chiaveri (1689-1770).
Gardens and garden palaces had been the first feature of
German architecture to fall under French influence. Henri
Perronet laid out French gardens in connection with the
Brunswick-Lutneburg residences of Celle (1673ff) and Herren-
hausen (1674ff), the latter being amplified into the finest formal
gardens in Germany by Le Notre’s pupil Martin Charbonnier
at the urging of the Electress Sophia (1689ff). Zuccalli was sent
on a study tour to France when the Lusthenn at Schleissheim
was begun (1684), and Hermann Korb was sent specifically to
examine Marly during the construction of Salzdahlum in the
1690s. Marly was also the inspiration of the pavilions added to
the grounds of the palace in the Grosser Garten at Dresden by
the garden-designer Johann Friedrich Karcher (1650-1726),
whilst Maximilian von Welsch (1668—1745) was to convert yet
another Favorite, Lothar Franz von Schonborn’s suburban
retreat outside Mainz (1717ff), into a complete copy of the
French maison de plaisance and its satellite pavilions. But it was
in 1715—the year in which, as we have seen, POppelmann was
sent to France to gain ideas for the Zwinger-that the floodgates
of French influence were released in Germany. The Treaty of
Rastatt the year before had established peace between France
and the Empire, one of whose provisions was the return from
their exile in France of the Wittelsbach brothers, the electors of
Bavaria and Cologne.
Both electors had had, as noted above, uncompleted palaces
in hand when driven into exile, and both had consulted French
architects about them. Joseph Clemens, the elector of Cologne,
had established more exclusive relations with Robert de Cotte,
whilst Max Emanuel, the elector of Bavaria, had not only had
consultations with Alexis Delamair and de Cotte, but had also
employed Germain Boffrand to build him an octagonal hunting
pavilion called Bouchefort (1705) at the focus of radiating rides
cut through the forest of Soignies in the Netherlands, and to
complete the redecoration of his house at Saint-Cloud (1713).
The decoration of this house had been begun by a Bavarian
protégé of his, Joseph Effner (1687—1745),°? the son of the head
gardener at Dachau, whom he had sent to Paris in 1706, at first
to study garden design, but subsequently architecture. The
difference between Max Emanuel and his brother, was that,
whereas the latter continued to depend heavily on French
advice, French architects, and French goods and craftsmen
after his return from exile, the former-who had a more
considerable state from which to draw them-—attempted to
train his own subjects in the new modes and techniques by
sending them to the fountainhead.
An extensive correspondence survives, at first between Joseph
Clemens himself and de Cotte,*? and then between the latter
and the successive architects that he sent the elector, exposing
the elector’s dependence upon de Cotte for plans, advice and
help. The correspondence reveals that it was the ‘grand et
magnifique’ of the regal monuments of the previous reign that
obsessed him, rather than the intimate planning of the Regence,
though he made contradictory demands upon de Cotte to shape
his designs to a purse more limited than that of the French king
(whose subsidies were, however, the source of such funds as the
successive electors of Cologne could spare for building).
Joseph Clemens, having originally intended the incorporation
of Zuccalli’s half-completed residence at Bonn into a much
grander design by de Cotte, was soon forced to limit the latter's
help to making some additions and modifications to counter
gS a a ee ee ee ee
Palace architecture in the Empire 281
Bl, 3
the monotony of Zuccalli’s fagades and the lack of grandeur or
variety in his planning. He did however succeed in building a
suburban palace on the axis of the residence to de Cotte's
plans—Schloss Clemensruhe at Poppelsdorf (17)]5ff)—whose
plan resembles that of the central palace at Marly. save that the
circular centre is an open. arcaded court rather than an enclosed
saloon, whilst its polychrome exterior and play of bulbous
roofs attractively betray its German location.**
In Bavaria, Joseph Effner immediately took over the
effective responsibility for the whole of the electors Lust-
bauwesen on his return in 1715. though Zuccalli remained
nominally chief architect until his death in 1724.5° Effner’s chief
task, as the elector tactfully attempted to explain to Zuccalli,
was the fitting up of the interiors of Schleissheim and
Nymphenburg with ‘certi ornament: alla francese del novo
gusto’—in other words in the by then well-established French
mode of so-called Régence decoration. which chiefly meant
painted grotesque ceilings in the manner of Audran. and
ribbon-and-diaperwork boiseries and stucco coves. But
Effmer—who seems to have remained untouched by a winter
study trip to Italy in 1717—also designed one of the best sets of
pavilions of any German palace in the grounds of Nymphen-
burg: the Pagodenburg (1717-19). a miniature reminiscence of
Bouchefort. with little Chinese to 1t but the name: the Baden-
burg (17}9-21). a bath-house with an appropriately “Roman
vestibule: and the Magdalenenklause (1725-28), a hermitage
built in the form of a ruined cell, with mingled Classical and
Gothick detailing that would be surprising even in England at
this date. At Schleissheim, whilst Effner designed apartments
with Régence boiseries and stucco coving that were passablv
French. but for the slight over-exuberance of the carving and
the blue-and-silver Wittelsbach colour scheme. the old-
fashioned vastness of Zuccallis core features, and Max
Emanuel’s similarly old-fashioned predilection for narrative
and allegorical frescoes and sculptural] stucco. led to the sum-
moning of the French sculptor-stuccador Charles Dubut from
Saxony. and the Venetian painter Jacopo Amigoni and the
Wessobrunner stuccador Johann Baptist Zimmermann from
working on the abbey buildings of Ottobeuren (1720). The
latter, though working to Effmers—and subsequently to
Cuvilliés'— overall designs, brought with him a taste for the
exuberant modelling of the forms of Nature, that played a
crucial role in the indigenous evolution of Bavarian Rococo
decoration.
Effner’s sway lasted little over ten years, for in 1724 Frangois
Cuvilliés (1695-1768) returned from spending four years in
Paris.2© Though officially employed as Effner’s draughtsman,
his imaginativeness as a decorator, allied to his first-hand
acquaintance with current Parisian fashions. soon won him
commissions in his own right. parucularly with the death of
Max Emanuel and the succession of Carl Albert in 1726. It was
however Max Emanuel who had first taken Cuvilli¢s. who was
born near Bouchefort at Soignies. into his household in 1708.
Cuvilliés is already recorded as a cadet and a draughtsman in
1716; the often quoted notion that he was a dwarf probably
arose from an exaggeration of the fact that his slight stature
prevented him pursuing his military career further. In Paris it is
likely that he studied with. rather than under. Jacques-Fran¢ois
Blondel. After his return. he was given his first major oppor-
tunity not by Carl Albert the new elector of Bavaria, but by his
brother Clemens August. the new elector of Cologne. in 1728.
In that vear the latter had just finished realizing a project of his
uncle and predecessor Joseph Clemens -—the reconstruction of
the old moated castle of Brithl as a modern palace (1725-28). ina
region noted for falconry.6” Clemens August had not followed
360 Abave left Nymphenburg (Munich). the *Saletl’ in the Pagodenburg
361 Abave right Nymphenburg. exterior of the Pagodenburg built by
Joseph Effner, 1717-19
362 Overleaf left Nymphenburg, interior in the Magdalenenklause built by
Effner, 1717-19
363 Overleaf right Pommersfelden, Mirror Cabinet, stucco by Daniel
Schenk. wood-work by Ferdinand Plitzner. 1713-18
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284 |
the plans procured by his uncle from de Cotte and Hauberat,
but had instead obtained fresh ones from the architect of his
chief friend and minister, Count Ferdinand von Pletten-
berg—Johann Conrad Schlaun (1695-1773). Schlaun, like
Plettenberg, however, came from another of Clemens August's
sees— Miinster—a strongly Dutch-influenced region of brick
buildings, and had little familiarity with French interior de-
coration.’§ Cuvilli¢gs was therefore called in to supply this,
beginning with the so-called Yellow Apartment in the north
wing (1728-30). and continuing with the remodelling of the
whole Scit/oss and the design of dependent buildings such as the
informal maison de plaisance for falconry, the Falkenlust
(1729-37).8°
In the design of the boiseries and stucco ceilings of the Yellow
Apartment Cuvilliés showed that he had a mastery of the
latest manner of French interior decoration -—of the kind then,
or just subsequently. practised in the hdrels de Lassay. de
Matignon, and de Roquelaure, and publicized by the plates in
Mariette’s Architecture Francoise (1728ff.)—that was fully the
equal of anything done in France itself. With the boiseries, the
ends of the outer mouldings of the panelling were curved, and
dissolved into ornament. With the ceilings, ornament broke the
confines of the cove and rose into cartouche- or canopy-like
points of emphasis in the axes, with a rosette in the centre. Most
of this ornament was gilded on a white ground, but some of the
ceilings were white on white. But the new element that Cuvillies
brought to this decoration, particularly in the Audience Cham-
ber, where the cove was entirely broken up into a series of
curvilinear fragments, was the depiction of Nature —here fal-
coners, herons and their nests—as an element in its own right,
not formalized or distorted into ornament.
The Italian stuccadors of the Yellow Apartment at Brihl
and of Falkenlust (where another former subordinate of de
Cotte, Michael Leveilly. acted as Cuvilli¢s’ draughtsman) influ-
ced Cuvilliés’ designs back to the previous de Cotte manner
with which they were familiar. When he came to work inde-
pendently in Bavaria, Cuvillies found instead that his designs
received a further impetus towards naturalism and the incor-
poration of that metaphor for Nature—rocaille—from his
executant stuccador, J.B.Zimmermann.®! Cuvillies’ chance
came in 1726 with the accession as elector of Bavaria of Carl
Albert, who wished to create a whole new set of richly decorated
state apartments, of an imperial grandeur that anticipated his
bid to become emperor on the extinction of the male line of the
Habsburgs. Working as Effner’s draughtsman, and with
J.B.Zimmermann as stuccador, Cuvilliés at first began to
transform Effner’s decorative schemes from within, and then
from 1728. when he was given parity with Effner, openly. This
can be seen in the surviving lower room of the Munich Resi-
dence —the Ancestors’ Gallery—where Cuvillies’ looser, more
naturalistic ceiling-decoration is superimposed upon Effner’s
stiffer, yet over-luxuriant, panelling and cove. A savage fire in
December 1729 destroyed much of what had been done, but a
fresh start was immediately made the next year upon what came
to be known as the Reiche Zimmer -—the ‘rich rooms’.°* Here
Cuvilliés was completely in control, designing for and directing
teams led by J.B. Zimmermann as stuccador, and Adam Pich-
ler, Wenzel Mirofsky, and Joachim Dietrich as woodcarvers.
These apartments (which have been remarkably restored since
their partial destruction in the last war) are not overpowering,
despite their profusion of gilding, because of the way in which,
above all in the ceilings, they include a wealth of relief sculpture
Palace architecture in the Empire 285
364 Opposite Wurzburg, garden front of the Residenz by Neumann and
Hildebrand!
365 Above Nymphenburg, exferior of ihe Amalienburg buili by Francois
Cuvillies, 1734-39
whose raison d‘étre is symbolical, but whose execution is of a
charmingly sophisticated naivéte—the countryside, animals.
and rustic gods come to court, the ornamental equivalent of
Lancret and Desportes. Mere ornament plays a subordinate
role, but in the succession of rooms, from the Mirror Cabinet
(1731) to the Green Gallery (1733) the increasingly important
part played by—now asymmetrical—cartouches and rocaille can
be observed. Comparison with the suites of engraved ornament
that Cuvilliés himself published (1738ff) suggests that much of
the al fresco informality and naturalistic detail was due to the
initiative of J.B. Zimmermann.
Both these elements are very much to the fore in Cuvillies’
next work, the Amalienburg (1734-39), a pheasant shooting
box added to the ranks of the pavilions in the park of
Nymphenburg, and surpassing them all.°? Whereas the Falken-
lust, despite the immense charm of its interior decoration,
centred on the theme of falconry, was basically an adaptation of
the French suburban villa that reflected Cuvilli¢s’ Parisian
apprenticeship, the Amalienburg 1s a true one-storey pavilion,
combining French interior planning with exterior architecture
indebted to Viennese Lusthduser. The climax of the building,
held between a concave front on one side and a pedimented
projection with convex steps on the other, is the central circular
Mirror Saloon. Framed by rooms decorated in silver on lemon
yellow either side, this is resplendent with the silver and azure of
the Wittelsbach arms. The mirrors create angled vistas and
redouble the glinting richness. The undulating play of their
rounded heads is communicated to the cornice, which in turn
becomes the ‘ground’ upon which a whole realm of nature
rests — trees, fountains, birds, animals, nymphs and putti. The
supreme achievement of Bavarian court Rococo, it stands
alone, even in Germany, whilst the contemporary French
365
. 366
366 Nymphenburg, the Mirror Saloon of the Amahenburg, stuccoed by
Johann Baptist Zimmermann
paragon that is so often held up alongside it—the Salon de la
Princesse in the Hétel de Soubise—is sober by comparison.
Unlike the Salon de la Princesse, the Mirror Saloon of the
Amalienburg employs a minimum of conventional ornament
and incorporates no paintings: instead, everything is taken
from the real world, whilst the stucco in the vault usurps the role
of a fresco in feigning a world above our heads.
Cuvillies designed another set of apartments in the Munich
Residence to celebrate Carl Albert's election as the Emperor
Charles VII (1740-43), but after the emperor's luckless death in
1745 the rooms were dismantled, and part of the woodwork
employed to furnish a much more modest. set of
apartments—the Kurfuirstenzimmer—whose name and simp-
licity proclaimed the rule of realism under Max Joseph Il.
Cuvilhes himself fell into disfavour, but was asked for designs
by the landgraf of Hesse-Cassel. In 1750 his services were again
required, to design the Residence Theatre, but in 1754, having
been already passed over in favour of Johann Gunezrhainer for
the succession to Effner as chief court architect, he was even
refused a rise in salary on the preposterous grounds that: ‘apart
from his mannered Opera House, we know nothing of Cuvillies’
supposed services’. He accordingly took his son to Paris for a
year (staying with the painter Chardin!), where they absorbed
the tempered Rococo taught by his old confrére, Jacques-
Francois Blondel, as may be seen from the town houses
designed by Cuvillieés after his return. Cuvilliés’ heyday was
however already over with the death of the spendthrift Carl
Albert, and his career uncharacteristically closed with the
termination of the facade of the Theatine Church (1767) for the
court, whilst for the next century his memory was only kept
opprobriously alive by his engravings.
The brilliance of Cuvillies’ interiors at Bruhl and Munich
established a new paragon for the building-mad princes of
South Germany. Leopoldo Retti, engaged in fitting up the
interior of the Ansbach Residence between 1734-45, sent a plea
for a stuccador from Johann Zimmermann’s troupe in 1734,
because the craftsmen in Munich ‘are so good of their kind, that
one will not find a better in Paris or in the whole of the rest of
Germany’, and in 1738 sent craftsmen to make careful drawings
of the Reiche Zimmer and the Amalienburg. The interiors of
the Ansbach Residence are indeed a tempered version of the
Reiche Zimmer. The Bamberg architect, J.J. Kuchel saw and
admired the Amalienburg and the Reiche Zininer on his study
tour of 1737. and it is probable that the drawings made by his
draughtsman influenced Antonio Bossi’s stucco in a Rococo
direction at Wurzburg. We have already seen in an eurlier
chapter how J.G. Ubelhér carried roeaille over into church
decoration in stucco, and Wessobrunner stuccadors were sum-
moned to work on palaces as far afield as Potsdam and
Bruchsal.
In terms of architecture, as opposed to decoration, it was
however another figure whose prestige caused him to be sum-
moned for advice on almost every palace in South Germany in
the second quarter of the century — Balthasar Neumann, whose
career has already been described above,”* (cf. p.267). The basis
of his fame was his work for the Schoénborn family, and in
order to put this in context it 1s necessary to go back to the first
of the family to be stricken by the Bamwwiurimb-— Lothar Franz
von Schénborn, prince-archbishop elector of Mainz and
prince-bishop of Bamberg. He had marked his election to the
see of Bamberg in 1693 by promptly laying plans for the
reconstruction of the residence—the Neue Hofhaltung—which
were carried out on rather old-fashioned lines by Johnann
Leonhard Dientzenhofer (1695-1705). In Mainz. Lothar Franz
could not justify rebuilding the residence. but instead built a
suburban retreat, the Favorite (1704ff)—whose conversion
into a ‘little Marly’ has already been alluded to.
It was in 1711, the same year as his nephew Friedrich Carl
began to rebuild Gollersdorf, that Lothar Franz began to build
anew country Sel/oss at Pommersfelden, with money acquired
from his support of the election of the Emperor Charles V1 at
Frankfurt.°> When in 1710 he inherited the old castle, half of
which was held in fee from Bamberg. and half from Bayreuth. it
was his intention simply to make it habitable. Its ruinous state,
however, led him first to plan a new three-winged Sch/oss on the
site of the old quadrangular one. and then, when the problems
of repartitioning this between Bamberg and Bayreuth, whilst
keeping the chapel on the Bamberg (Catholic) side, became
insuperable, to transfer it to a new site. All this time Friedrich
Carl. who regarded his uncle's architects as second-rate pro-
vincials, was urging him to send plans of the site so that his own
architect, Hildebrandt. could produce a design. Lothar Franz
at first refused, on the grounds of economy, and when he
relented, forestalled HiJdebrandt with ‘a design according to
my own fancy and comfort... 1 am making provision for future
women and children [when he bequeathed the property], and so
J am not making a court with lots of antechambers and
galleries. but a really fine. large. and comfortable country
house, which will also look well and make a bit of a show.
These plans were made by Johann Dientzenhofer, whom he
appointed to succeed his brother Johann Leonhard in 1711, on
the basis of his own suggestions; so When Lothar Franz in 17)2
finally had his plans taken to be given a more metropolitan
polish by “you Sir virtuosi, curiosi, et suniptuosi at Vienna’, he
had already begun his own wing. which could not be changed.
and was insistent that ‘my staircase, which 1s of my own
invention and my masterpiece, must remain’. Nonetheless the
367 Above right Munich, Residence Theatre built by Cuvilliés, 1751-53,
reconstructed after being seriously damaged by bombing in 1944
368 Right Pommersfelden. exterior of the Schloss built by Johann
Dientzenhofer and others, 17111ff.
Palace architecture in the Empire 287
next year, when Dientzenhofer was sent to Vienna to be shown
all that was new by Hildebrandt. and to mull over the plans
further with him, the latter came up with modifications to the
staircase that turned it from a bizzare into a beautiful idea.
The singularity of Lothar Franz's stairs was that he wanted
them to be housed tn a pavilion of their own, projecting from the
Schloss like the centre bar of an E, and that they were not, in the
usual way. to hug the walls. but to stand free like outdoor stairs,
with passages between them and the walls. Because of the ‘core’
arrangement of the main rooms - sala terrena, leading to the
garden on the ground floor. and a small cut-off. domed oval!
vestibule leading to the two-storey saloon on the first floor—it
was only necessary for the main stairs to rise through one
storey to the vestibule, which gave directly on to the saloon
369
370
straight ahead, and was continued on either side as a passage
giving access to the two wings. Although Lothar Franz prided
himself upon his ‘invention’, the form of the stairs themselves
derives from a twin staircase designed by Palladio for the Casa
Civena in Vicenza, and employed by Fischer von Erlach for his
‘Staircase for the Empress’ at Schonbrunn (demolished under
Maria Theresa). His innovation, that of detaching the stairs
from the walls and letting them stand free as if they were an
outdoor staircase (and indeed the visitor was intended to
dismount from his carriage 1n the dry in the staircase-hall), was
precisely what Hildebrandt did away with. Rightly maintaining
that the hall would be too echoingly vast (a lesson not re-
membered at Gottweig!), Hildebrandt drew on a feature of
some very similar stairs designed by Claude Perrault for the
369 Left Pommersfelden, the ceremonial staircase designed by Lothar
Franz von Schonborn and Hildebrandt
370 Below Pommersfelden, the sala terrena vaulled by Johann
Dientzenhofer, with rocaille by George Hennicke, 1719-23
371 Opposite Pommersfelden, the Mirror Cabinet, ceiling stucco by Daniel
Senen kcal) 1)
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290 =Part 1V Centra) and Eastern Europe
Louvre. creating a gallery right round the first floor, with a
similar gallery above, supported by single fluted columns at the
corners and paired fluted columns on the sides (themselves
exceptional in German Baroque architecture, and inspired by
Perrault’s east front of the Louvre), with “Imperial capitals
derived from a version of the French Order. The narrower well
made possible a pavilion vault, supported on the herms of the
upper arcade, later illusionistically frescoed by Marchini and
Byss (1717). Hildebrandt could do little to alter Dientzenhofer’s
somewhat dry—though attractively roofed—exteriors, but in-
side he supplied designs for Daniel Schenk’s stucco, which
introduced Viennese ribbon-work to this part of Germany.
Dientzenhofer’s special achievement was the vaulting of the
sala terrena with interpenetrating vaults and three-dimensional
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1721
373 Above Bruchsal, contemporary bird’s-eye view
ribs; the superlative “grotto-work’ decoration was executed by
Georg Hennicke (1722-23). Finally, Lothar Franz’s Mainz
architect, Maximilian von Welsch, was called upon to give a
French touch to the whole, by laying out the gardens, and by
designing the semi-circular stables as a feigned orangery in
front of the house.
No sooner had Lothar Franz completed Pommersfelden
than two of his other nephews, Damian Hugo and Johann
Philipp Franz, were elected to the prince-bishoprics of Speyer
and Wurzburg respectively (1719), and immediately set about
thinking of the relocation and reconstruction of their re-
sidences. The architectural] collaboration that had grown up
between Lothar Franz and Friedrich Carl (who felt aggrieved
that he had been passed over for his brother by the canons of
Wirzburg) now developed into a sustained barrage of criticism
and advice directed at this supposedly jejune pair—both of
whom had perfectly clear ideas of their own.
Damian Hugo was given good grounds for building an
entirely new residence at Bruchsal (1721-32, 1738ff)°® by the
obstacles raised by his see-the free city of Speyer—to his
residing there and rebuilding the old bishops’ palace razed by
the French in 1689. In 1720 he chose a virgin, level and
unconfined site at Bruchsul, on a slight elevation, with splendid
views over the valley of the Rhine, and building materials in
abundance. The plans he procured, not from the expatriate
French architect to Speyer. Froimont, but from his uncle
Lothar Franzs Mainz architect, Maximilian von Welsch.
Welsch’s plans are lost, so we do not exactly know what he
designed with Damian Hugo whilst they both took the waters at
Schlangenbad, but the unusual arrangement of the palace as a
series of detached or semi-detached blocks round a court was
probably insisted upon by Damian Hugo, who subsequently
justified this as a measure to prevent fire spreading, 1n a land
where war always threatened. The flanking buildings, which
were begun first, were certainly designed by von Welsch. It is a
sign of Damian Hugo’s confidence in his own abilities that he
employed architects only in a consultant, but never a super-
visory capacity, preferring instead to direct operations himself
through a succession of masons, whilst he was for ever falling
out with those who worked for him. When it came to the main
corps-de-logis in 1725, Damian Hugo turned to another Mainz
architect, the gentleman-amateur Anselm Franz von Ritter zu
Groenesteyn, who helped to incorporate what must have been
an idea of Damian Hugo’s—a circular staircase-well, with two
flights diverging from the vestibule to climb the outside walls
and meet on the opposite side. This unusual feature was to
occupy the centre of the building, with a saloon on the piano
nobile on either side. which thus had to be connected by a bridge
over the centre of the well. The next year however, Damian
Hugo, belatedly realizing that he had not allowed for sufficient
rooms to lodge his household — and there was no town for them
to take quarters in — high-handedly got his builder to insert a
mezzanine between the ground floor and the piano nobile. Not
only did this offend against von Ritters French notions of
propriety—and he was not to be won over by Damian Hugo’s
bluster that: “ol course one sees this in the most distinguished
modern palaces in Rome and Italy, of which | stll have a fresh
picture in my mind* but it also meant that the staircases had an
extra half-storey to climb, so that they no longer fitted. Once his
suggested device of prolonging the stairs into the vestibule had
been rejected, von Ritter washed his hands of the problem,
leaving Damian Hugo to bemoan the ‘hole’ in the centre of his
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palace for the next four vears. In 1728 he had the good fortune
to procure the services of Balthasar Neumann from the then
bishop of Wirzburg. Christoph Franz von Hutten. who had no
desire to order any but essential work to be done on the
Wurzburg Residence. Neumann began by designing the com-
pletion of the rest of the corps-de-logis (which was given
Palace architecture in the Empire 29]
374 Below left Wurzburg, the Kaisersaal, with stucco by Antonio Bossi and
frescoes by G. B. Tiepolo. t75t-52
375 Below right Bruchsal, upper landing of staircase by Neumann. begun
1731. Stuccoes by J. M. Feichtmayr. frescoes by Johann Zick, 1752
Photograph taken before the bombing of the Schioss in 1944. The staircase
and most of the stucco-work has now been brilliantly restored
376 Right Wurzburg. exterior of the Residenz built by Balthasar
Neumann and others. (720ff
illusionistic exterior detailing @ /a Marly by Marchimi). and
early in 173] set to work with Damian Hugo. who stood by to
‘mit componirn . to redesign the core.° Not only did he fit the
stairs in. he also substituted a solid circular platform for von
Ritter’s bridge. The entering visitor was (and 1s again. thanks to
the brilliant restoration of the flattened Schloss after the war)
thus faced with three openings leading through darkness to
light: the central one leads through a dimly lit grotto simulating
a ruin to the garden room on the other side. whilst the two arms
of the staircase begin as darkish passages climbing the sides of
the central cylinder. slowly emerging into the pure, light-filled
domed rotunda between the two saloons. The experience is
made into a true climax by the superlative rocaille stucco by
J.M. Feichtmayr and the illusionistic fresco by Johannes Zick
(1752). who were recommended to Damian Hugo's extravagant
successor, Franz Christoph von Hutten. by Neumann.
Damian Hugo's palace. though begun a year after Johann
Philipp Franz’s. was structurally complete within his own reign.
and only decorated under his successor. whereas the con-
struction (1720—44) and decoration of the Wurzburg Residence
extended over the reigns of six bishops. spanning the whole
period from Régence to the German equivalent of Louis XVI.
the Zopfsril.°> Its beginnings were modest enough. and lay in
the desire of Johann Philipp Franz-— ironically approved by his
chapter on the grounds of economy!-to transfer his residence
from the Marienberg. a modernized mediaeval castle on a hill
on the other bank of the Main. into the town near the cathedral.
Though his uncle and brother instantly began to seethe with
plans and to lay him under regular siege with their architects,
Johann Philipp Franz at first kept his head and announced his
intention of cutting his coat “according to the slender measure
of my lands and purse’. which meant enlarging a ‘Schlosslein’
already in the town. and rejecting the ‘castelli in aria’ proposed
«| a re
292 Part 1V Central and Eastern Europe
by Hildebrandt (who passed through in 1719). Despite the
urging of Friedrich Carl to build something ‘princely and
worthy...pro dignitate tanti episcopatus et principis’, the
bishop clearly resented the assumption that his brother and
uncle knew so much better, and preferred to correspond with
another brother, Rudolf Franz Erwein, about his own plans.
The discovery of the ruinous state of the fabric of the ‘Sch/-
Osslem first gave the ‘caste//i in aria’ a chance, and gave Lothar
Franz his cue to obtain the point that the new palace should be
aligned on the point of the bastion (cf. the Zwinger). Meanwhile
Hildebrandt went to work on one set of plans, and a group of
Mainz gentlemen-architects— Philipp Christoph von Erthal,
the master of horse von Rotenhan, and von Welsch—under
Lothar Franz on another. Against this formidable battery
Johann Philipp Franz could only field the “Engineer” Balthasar
Neumann, who, though winning the admiration of the other
Schonborns for his abilities, was crucially disadvantaged in
their eyes by never having been to Italy or France. At this stage
he was anyway only acting as architectural amanuensis to
Johann Philipp Franz who was criticized for understanding
neither architecture nor architectural plans and, despite putting
himself in his uncle's hands as a mere novice, for deciding
everything ex cathedra, forcing Neumann to put a whole series
of wretched ideas down on paper, threatening to ruin the whole
project, both the Mainz collective’s designs for the interior and
Hildebrandt’s designs for the interior.
At this point, in January 1720, an unlikely deus ex
machina appeared — Jakob Gallus, the confidential minister of
the previous bishop. His defalcations were found to have been
so enormous, that ‘in these pinched times... from so wicked a
servant may be made a good paymaster’: he was forced to buy
himself off charges with the enormous sum (for the period) of
600,000 florins. Johann Philipp Franz instantly wrote off to ten
architects inside and outside Germany for plans, whilst Lothar
Franz sent the word to Hildebrandt — ‘Nur wacker bauconcepten
her’—*plan boldly away’, and Hildebrandt took him at his word
by even drawing Prince Eugene and General Althan into his
planning sessions. However, when the foundation-stone of the
new and now enlarged palace was finally laid on 22nd May
1720, the honours went not to Hildebrandt but to the Mainz
team of von Erthal and von Welsch, who had enjoyed the
advantage of coming to Wiirzburg to mull their plans over with
Johann Philipp Franz. Even so, there were some points on
which Johann Philipp Franz was adamant; significantly these
concerned, not the architectural ordonnance and detailing,
which he was perfectly happy to leave to the Mainz team, but
matters of lodging and access: he was insistent upon a triple
entrance, so that a carriage could deposit him dry at the foot of
the stairs and turn out again (though it would also have the
symbolic value of a triumphal arch, like that on the Berlin
Stadtschloss), and upon a mezzanine between the ground and
first floors as well as one above. This idea emanated from
Hildebrandt, and caused much head-shaking among the Mainz
team, who finally persuaded the bishop at least to drop it from
the cour dhonneur, in order to create variety. Though the Mainz
team professed themselves exasperated by six weeks of chop-
ping and changing their plans to accommodate Johann Philipp
Franz ‘caprices’, and at times regretted any association with
such a ‘wrecked and crippled abortion of a building’, the final
result in most essentials repeats their original design, albeit ona
yet more spacious scale. The palace is a hybrid between the
three-winged chateau round a cour d@honneur and the multiple
courtyard type found in the ambitious designs for Rhineland
residences. There are two courtyards in either wing, with oval
projections — originally designed to hold the chapel and the sa/a
ferrena—in the centre of their outer facades. The latter was
placed where it was because the entrance in the centre of the
corps-de-logis was to be driven right through to the garden
front, with a three-armed staircase placed on either side of the
vestibule. The elevations of the wings, which were essentially
designed by Hildebrandt, remained canonical for all but the
cour d'honneur.
It is a token of the Mainz team’s responsibility for the design
that von Welsch was paid an annual salary to come and inspect
the building at intervals, though Neumann, assisted by Jo-
hannes Dientzenhofer for the technical aspects, was put in day-
to-day control. Once work on the north block (which was where
the bishop intended to live whilst the massive task of complet-
ing the rest of the palace was accomplished) was well advanced,
Johann Philipp Franz belatedly took up Lothar Franz’s sug-
gestion of broadening Neumann's experience, sending him to
Paris for three months to gain ideas for furnishings and interior
decoration, and to consult with the leading French architects,
de Cotte and Boffrand, over the plans for the Residence.*?
Faced with these plans de Cotte could only comment that
there was ‘much in the Italian manner and something German
about them’, whilst most of his suggested improvements were
made in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion that took no account of the
bishop’s requirements—as Neumann shrewdly remarked, “his
own designs give him the most pleasure’. One suggestion that he
made was, however, of great importance, because Neumann
later adopted and adapted it for his own, despite his patron’s
proprietary interest in the forsaken design—that of suppressing
one staircase and so enlarging the other that it had a platform
all round the top and took light from the end as well as from the
side. Boffrand was more accommodating in his planning, but as
implacably French in his exterior elevations, as the designs that
he published in his Oeuvres d’Architecture reveal. On Neu-
mann’s return a joint planning session was held to incorporate
some of the Parisian suggestions, and in July 1724 Boffrand
himself came on a visit, tactfully praising Pommersfelden and
the Residence in terms of there being nothing in France to
377 Top left Wirzburg Residenz, plan of ihe first floor by Neumann with
the help of Maximilian von Welsch, Hildebrandt and other archiiects
378 Opposite Wurzburg, the ceremonial staircase, built by Neumann,
(737-42, frescoed by G. B. Tiepolo, 1752-53
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compare with them! A month later Johann Philipp Franz was
dead. and during the rein of his successor, Christoph Franz von
Hutten (1724-29), no more was done than to complete the north
court, bar the oval projection. With the election of Friedrich
Carl von Schénborn (1720-46) the realization of the whole
grandiose project was assured, with the important difference
that Vienna, rather than the French-inclined Rhineland, now
set the tone, and that Neumann finally came into his own as an
architect, favoured by his fidelity to the Schonborns and their
projects during the interregnum. Though elected to the sees of
both Wurzburg and Bamberg in 1729, Friedrich Carl did not
leave Vienna tll forced to vacate the vice-chancellorship in
1734. He naturally dismissed von Welsch. for he already had
Hildebrandt as his architect and friend. For 1730 Neumann
cautiously proposed building the south block on the same lines
as the north, but the cogency of his suggestions was already
revealed by Friedrich Carl's reluctant assent to his idea for the
placing of the court church (see p.268). In the crucial] planning
session held in Vienna in September 1730 Hildebrandt was
given the task of redesigning the cour d'honneur fenestration,
the garden front, and the main corps-de-logis, but Neumann's
adoption of the vast single staircase and his relocation of the
sala terrena and redesigning of this and the vestibule found
favour. In succeeding years Neumann's mastery of vaulting
techniques enabled him to prevail over Hildebrandt in two
important matters—the shaping of the interior of the court
church, and the vaulting of the staircase. As originally en-
visaged by de Cotte, and as perpetuated in Boffrand’s engrav-
ings and Neumann s earliest designs. the upper gallery was to be
surrounded by a colonnade. upon which the vault over the well
of the staircase would be supported. However, abetted by the
lightness and mastery of German roof-timbering (remarked on
by Boffrand), Neumann was able to construct a single vault
over the whole staircase area (1742-43). thus providing the
matrix for G.B. Tiepolo’s masterpiece (1752-53). His son tells an
amusing tale of Hildebrandt offering to hang himself from the
vault should it hold, and Neumann countering this by offering
to fire cannon underneath it— and indeed in the last war the
vault (and hence’s Tiepolo’s fresco) survived, when so much
else went up in flames. Though Hildebrandt still supplied
designs for certain special features like the furnishing and
decoration of the court church, with Friedrich Carl's removal
to Franconia Hildebrandt lost control of the interiors of the
Residence as well. Ornamental draughtsmanship was not Neu-
mann $ forte, and control over this passed instead to the team of
J.R.Byss the painter, J.W.von der Auwera the sculptor. and
the superlative Comasque stuccador Antonio Bossi, whose two
surviving masterpieces are the purely stuccoed Weisser Saal
(1744-45) and the Aaisersaa/, in which he supplied the gilded
stucco and stucco-marble setting for Tiepolo’s trial frescoes
(1749-53). Hildebrandt did not even receive such honour as was
due to him in Wiirzburg, and in 1743 we find him writing sadly
to Friedrich Carl to complain of this and of the engravings
being made that credited not him but Neumann with the
Residence. so that he could truly say, “et hos versulos feci, tutit
379 Opposite Bruhl, the ceremonial slaircase, added by Balthasar
Neumann, 1743-48. frescoes by Carlo Carlone, 1750. stucco by Giuseppe
Ariari, C. P. Morsegno and G.A. Brilli, 1748-63
380 Above right Brihl, Salle des gardes. fresco by Carlo Carlone. 1752,
stucco by C.P. Morsegno. 1754
alter honores. It grieves me very much, that another should
parade himself in my clothes. ...° This was indeed an injustice,
but as we have seen no single person could claim credit for the
Wiirzburg Residence: it is the most remarkable example of
collective planning in Baroque Germany.
Borrowed clothes or no, the Wurzburg Residence set the seal
on Neumann's reputation as a planner of palaces in general.
and of staircases in particular. Friedrich Carl himself employed
him to design and build his country Schloss at Werneck
(1733-45). whose chapel has already been mentioned (cf see
above, p.268): for yet another member of the Schénborn
family, Franz Georg, archbishop-elector of Trier, he built a
Sommerschloss called Sch6nbornslust near Coblenz (1748-52,
destroyed in 1793), and through the Trier architect Johannes
Seitz his influence was perpetuated in the region. After Fried-
rich Carl’s death Neumann was particularly at liberty to travel
ceaselessly, and the palaces upon which he gave or sent advice
included Stuttgart (1747-49), Carlsruhe (1750-51), and even
the Hofburg at Vienna (1746—49).!°° His most distinguished
intervention was, however. over the staircase of Schloss Briihl
(1744—48).!°! Neumann was employed by Clemens August ina
consultative capacity on the staircase at Brihl from 1740
onwards, despite the retention of Cuvilliés. It was indeed
Cuvilligs’ alterations to Schlaun’s plans—his abolition of the
real and mimic mediaeval round towers in 1735-36. and his
transfer of the show side from the cour d’honneur on the east to
the garden side on the south—that necessitated the relocation
of the staircase. Neumann moved the staircase to the north,
creating an extra saloon in its place, so that the visitor suc-
cessively mounted the stairs and passed through the salle des
gardes before entering the last and most sumptuous of all the
sets of apartments created at Bruhl (c. | 750-64). The entrance to
the staircase, as a censorious English travel-writer noted in
1794, ‘is peculiar for the palace of a prince: and by no means
favourable to the idea of his dignity. It is by means of a gateway,
which runs through the centre of the building, after the manner
of some large inns...°;a single central flight of stairs mounts to
the right, ascending towards a remarkable tomb-like monu-
425
379
296 Part lV Geéntral and Eastern Europe
ment to Clemens August, framed by paired columns on con-
soles; the two return flights are on bridges supported by trios of
caryatids at the foot, and paired stucco-lustro columns over the
entrance-passage; two passages held in by the same exquisite
wrought iron-work as the stairs run back towards the apart-
ments in the north wing, whilst the landing acts as a prelude to
the main apartments in the south wing; above, the beginning
of a flat ceiling supported by paired herm-brackets is cut open
to reveal a circular gallery and a dome-like fresco (a device
reminiscent of the Daun-Kinsky staircase in Vienna) celebrat-
ing the glory of Clemens August beyond. Only the structural
design of the lower part of the staircase is Neumann’s, and it ts
masterly; the shaping of the upper zone and the decoration of
the whole were designed and executed by the team of draughts-
men and craftsmen who combined to make Bruhl surpass any
other palace in sheer splendour: Michel Leveilly the architect;
Johann Adolf Biarelle (now back from Ansbach) the draughts-
man; the stuccadors Giuseppe Artari, Carlo Pietro Morsegno,
and Giuseppe Antonio Brilli; and the frescoist Carlo Carlone.
It is a curious fact that Johann Conrad Schlaun
(1695—1773),!° who conducted the reconstruction of Bruhl
until he was set aside for the more ‘modern’ Cuvilliés in 1728,
should have been responsible for designing and building what
may be considered the last Rococo palace in the Empire-— the
Minster Residence (1767-84) — at a time when Salins de Mont-
fort and d‘Ixnard were introducing the severe massivity of Neo-
Classicism from France. Despite his displacement from Bruhl,
Clemens August had never given up employing him in his
Westphalian territories, and working in the idiom of this
region subtly layered brickwork, with freestone dressings and
slate roofs—Schlaun produced a series of buildings noteworthy
for their spectacular adaptation to their sites, and for their
achievement of considerable effects with the most modest
means. Conspicuous amongst them 1s Clemens August's Jagd-
schloss at Clemenswerth (1737-44), an original adaptation of
Boffrand’s maison de chasse at Bouchefort for Clemens
August's uncle Max Emanuel, with additional inspiration from
the Falkenlust. Here a cruciform hunting lodge with a circular
central saloon below stands in the middle of eight rides cut
through the forest, with eight pavilions (one of which ts a
chapel) placed between the rides. In the interior an ingenious
miniature two-armed staircase leads to the rooms on the first
floor, whilst the rooms are decorated with lacy stucco very
similar to that in the Falkenlust, and also designed by Michel
Leveilly. Though it is not a palace project, mention must be
made of Schlaun’s Church and Hospital of St Clement
(1744-54) for the Brothers Hospitaller in 
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